When you tell me my Baby is ugly

As a bookshop owner you can imagine the daily ‘agitation’ of questions and comments I am made party to. I can’t say I like all of them, nor can I say I necessarily want to hit people with the hate stick. You adapt a certain level of what I like to call “Tour Guide Barbie Smile” when working with the public. I knew it with my previous job and I most assuredly am well versed in it with my current position as owner of a bookshop.

I don’t often allow such honesty about the inner workings of the business to see the light of day as my friends are customers and customers have become my friends. You see the trickiness involved? It may be you I’m complaining about (insert wink). However, while listening to my favorite podcast in the shower this morning (What? I have to make good use of my time!) I was enlightened, or what have you, about an experience that could form a blog post before my very eyes! I haven’t written in ages, but I’m always hungry for the words to see the light of day on here. Here follows my line of thought, which I owe in part to the Book Riot Podcast . . . so thank you.

I found myself in the aisles of a chain bookstore this past weekend and felt two things tugging at my heart strings. People swarmed the bookstore in a dizzying fashion and I wanted to be the crabby bibliophile in the corner shouting, “Oi! Clear out, I need some peace and quiet while I commune with these tomes of greatness.” I’m picturing the, according to IMDB.com, ‘Ancient Booer’ from The Princess Bride. Not a pretty picture, eh? A sense of great triumphant accompanied that thought as well. BOOKS! REAL BOOKS ARE NOT DEAD!?! Bookstores, low and behold, still hold an importance in a person’s life, not that I didn't know this already. Reality hit again, though, when the sight before me made me wish our shop was half as busy.

It could be customers, friends, family, you name it; I have heard the sad prophecy/proclamation many a time that the creature that is the bookstore is a dying breed. “Aren't you worried that bookstores are on the out?” “Soooo, you are doing well, I mean bookstores aren't you know…erm…well the place to get your books anymore; what with eBooks and Amazon.” It will never cease to amaze me people’s ability to open mouth and insert foot. Now this isn't to say the people who are heart felt about their concern are to be silenced. No. I’m talking about the gossipy, proud to where their negativity badge, pointing out the “obvious” people. Do they imagine this is a thought a bookshop owner wants to hear?

On the same coin, there is this beast known as Amazon. I am a card carrying member (not really, but wouldn't be cool if we had cards?) of Amazon Prime. The reasons are numerous and I find it important to be open about this fact so as not to seem a hypocrite. Amazon is not my go to for everything I need or buy. Yesterday I bought yarn from them that I had to have in order to finish a project. It was not my first choice, but as my luck would have it, my only choice as the yarn is no longer made. I didn't even get the Prime shipping because it was a seller rather than an Amazon distributed product. Where am I going with this?


How can customers possibly be persuaded to believe I want to hear the ominous, curse like words, “I’ll just buy it on Amazon”? And yet we continue to hear this response from the book browsers. If my baby was ugly, do you think I would desire you tell me in so many words? NO! Amazon has its place and purpose, even in my life, but by no means do I want to know by your own admittance you will be shopping there instead. You know what Amazon doesn't have that Pete & Freddy’s has in spades? Passion. Drunk, palpable, yet immeasurable passion for the written word. The books, for the time being, are our children. When we sell them to customers, we are trusting they will be loved just as much, if not more, in your hands as they have been while in their spot of honor on our shelves. If you make the decision to tell us and then to move forward with that decision to shop vocally not LOCALLY, you are hurting an economy that is finding an increasingly difficult existence in today’s world, your local small businesses.

I am by no means trying to shame you into being an anti-Amazon shopper or to even turn you off from my shop. Monopolies are bad for a reason, too many to go into here and now. When you support your local businesses you are supporting someone’s dream or hope for the future. A passion you may not find anywhere else or may only find in similar realms, a world of hard and ever loving work. So when you tell us you are going to shop at Amazon instead of our shop, great go have fun with that, but please keep it to yourself. My baby is a beautiful bit of genius that I know others love and cherish as much as I do. They don’t like it any more than I do when you tell us it is “ugly”.
Give the best gift you can possibly give a shop owner this Thanksgiving and Christmas season . . .

SHOP LOCALLY.

OR

Keep things simple and sweet . . . don’t air your “dirty” laundry to us. (insert wink and side hug)

A Letter to.... Personal, Honest, My Words, My Experience

Dear Boy,

I address you so not to keep you a secret, not to emasculate you or belittle your male pride, not to waylay you with juvenile friendliness that you might sympathize and pity me. No. I pay homage to youth. Our youth.  To the naïve people we were years ago before we knew who and what would come later. To the fantasy that I endeavored to nurture despite all odds and to the hope you fed with little nods to your ego and smiled half-truths. Here’s to letting memories guide us, wrong paths, right paths, hurts like hell paths and fun for the moment paths.

I want to fault you for everything. Pass the blame and let the guilt weigh heavy on someone else. I want many things, but most of all I want to know that it wasn’t all in vain. Thus I can’t look at you and think YOU did so much and so little to wrong me.

The idea that a first love would be a first and that there would be a second to follow was foreign to me. Love was meant to be first, always, happily ever after and yes forever. Little girls don’t sit in their room imagining broken hearts, can’t get out of bed days, can’t go on, live on memories and hope for the best days…hope period. I didn’t think to prepare for unrequited love or to even fall so hard that I’m still reeling 3 years later…trying to a find status quo of normal.

“We lost faith in the arms of love.”* That very nearly sums it up.

Honestly? I was foolish. I was knocked over the head, tie me up and drown me foolish. I paid little notice to the signs, to people telling me over and over again, to God, to so many damn notions that loving you was wrong; that investing so much hope in a hero…a hero like you was wrong. You’re a king. A king of freedom, of thrill, of a brilliance no one could dare out shine. I didn’t want to out shine you. I didn’t even want to smother your brilliance. I wanted to join you. Can you blame me?

Never marry a man expecting to change him. That never crossed my mind. People whispered that to me and shouted it my face with their disdain, but I don’t like change. I was along for the ride, wherever it might have taken me. That’s where I think YOU missed out. How often do people know or meet someone so willing to accept the EVERYTHING about another human being? I’d like to think nearly never. Perhaps I’m wrong.

I feel as though I should go in to detail of the me you missed out on by not giving me the dangled in front of my face chance that I so wanted. That feels petty to me. The cards have been played and things are too late for us, for me. In the dark of night sometimes I let my hopes whisper to me still, but I’m learning to put those to sleep in the far recesses of my mind. I need someone else to show me love. I don’t need to show someone else why they should love me.

I need to take the steps to remove you from my life. That scares me. It horrifies me. Am I a fake? Did I give up too easily? Hell no, but I must have the solace that letting go will bring. It worries me. I can’t be confined by it anymore. But change? Remember it scares me. But maybe establishing these threads of thought can serve as a testimony…a eulogy to a first love.

I couldn’t make you love me. Why should I?

I CAN thank you. I’m growing. It has cost me so much and continues to leave scars that I know will be there, if not always, for a long time to come. I can’t settle. You gave me reason to search for a me that was/is hidden behind doubts and conformity driven hypocrites. “Keep your head up. Keep your heart strong. Keep your mind set.”** I’m diversifying. There are so many new things about me. Music tastes, dreams, opinions, the freedom to be, and so much more. You’re not responsible for it all, you are just the catalyst.

I’m thanking you; I’m not knighting you or paving the way for your sainthood. Presumptuous much? Maturity is many things. I believe it is admitting your mistakes, thanking those responsible for your life lessons (ultimately God) and forgiving. Not forgetting, though, that’s too much to ask of anyone.

You broke me; you broke me in too many ways to list. I don’t want or desire to dwell on. I want to trouble you. I want to put a catch in your spirit that causes you to look up one day and think of me. Think of me and wonder what could have been and what you owe me; apologies to fill pages and hours.

I used to think the woman that came to mean something to you in your life needed to endeavor to deserve you. Oh how I shouldered you with so much unearned glory. Now my prayer and hope for that woman is that you endeavor to deserve HER. The vengeful side of me…hopes she causes you to question…to question your existence and why you tore down your walls. To diminish the cocky bastard who bewitches young hearts with his smile.

Hell hath no fury….

I am many things; a lover of symbolic tendencies most certainly. In one month it will be 3 years to the day that hell, hoping, falling, fading, running and so much more began. I will say goodbye then, though I say goodbye to you now with my best weapon…words.

“I fought the wolves of patience just to let it lie down.”***

I am not courageous, but I deserve so much more than you gave me,

Maddie



* The Wolves by Ben Howard
** Keep Your Head Up by Ben Howard
*** These Waters by Ben Howard
Are we noticing a pattern?