Interesting and funny things do happen in the book store all the time, and while I understand that most of my stories have an "I guess you had to be there" vibe, I'll share a few here anyway.
An older man came into the store last week, and the minute he saw me, he bee-lined towards me and asked if I could check if we had a certain title in stock (I am inclined to protect his identity, for reasons that will eventually become clear, so I won't be specific about the book). I looked up the title, and while it is in our system, it's not currently in stock in stores or available to order. The gentleman then explained that he is the author of this book, it's a sequel to another book he wrote in the 90's (which he couldn't get into stores, but it is available as an ebook online), and after finding a British publisher for the sequel, he urged them to get our store to distribute it in Canada. I didn't have any more information about the status of his book than what it shows on our kiosk, but he was an old man who obviously liked to talk, so we chatted for a while longer.
He wanted to talk about the Kennedy assassination and the access he had been granted, as a writer, to archived information (he was unimpressed by Trump's directive to have records unsealed - he didn't believe that anything incriminating would be released, and especially because he was convinced that Johnson was incredibly crooked, and involved in JFK's death). He told me that he was a musician in the Canadian army, and as he rose through the ranks, he eventually became the conductor of an army band based in Calgary. And apparently, the musician's union of Calgary bars the army band from performing in public, so out of frustration, he eventually left the army to become a civilian musician.
He moved to England and was a session musician on Myrna Loy's records and played in the background as Frank Sinatra recorded the soundtrack for a movie he appeared in. An acquaintance from the British army asked him at some point if he wanted a gig playing for the brass (the Brits apparently have a directive against their own army band playing while their superiors get soused), and he was happy to oblige. A few days after that gig, the acquaintance called him and said, "You caught the eye of someone important, and he would like to have a meeting with you." When the musician asked his friend who this "someone important" was, the friend replied, "You know I can't tell you beforehand. You don't have to go to the meeting, we can pretend this phone call never happened, but I think you know what you'll be getting yourself into if you do go." The musician did understand, and he did go.
This "someone important" asked the musician about his years of service in the Canadian army, confirmed that he had a pilot's license, and explained that as someone who had established a persona as a travelling performer, he would be ideally suited to taking on a cloak-and-dagger Cold War role - just do what he was doing, allow the British army to recommend some gigs, and keep his eyes and ears open. And that's what he did, and that's essentially what his books are about. He explained to me that most of what he did was pretty routine, and only once did he do something that he was later ashamed of, and it was wanting to write about this incident that led to his first book. Apparently, this "shameful" incident is in the first book, heavily fictionalised, but it gave him the writing bug. He is currently working on the third volume of his trilogy.
Needless to say, I found that whole interaction fascinating.
That was pretty much the end of our conversation, and as I walked away, I couldn't help but smile at this man's self-assessment of having had such an interesting life - it's awesome that he looks back on his life that way (and for all I know, he was referring to something more than his brush with Joan Rivers), but by contrast with the man I had met just the day before...
And my last story has to do with a customer I've written about before, a man in his sixties who is "one of those close talkers whose mind pings around from topic to topic, his speech punctuated by laughter at unlikely intervals". He was in a while ago, and like always, he zeroed in on me and wanted to tell me a story. Unlike previously - when his stories seemed to come out of nowhere - this time he said that his life has been so funny that many of his friends have told him he should be a standup comedian, and apparently, I'm one of the people that he tells his stories to to see if they work. After asking me if it would be okay if he told me something "kind of out there" (and despite dreading what he thought was "out there" compared to some things he's told me before), I said sure. His story:
So, I was married for a while - you're married, right? - and we tried to have kids for the longest time - you have kids, right? And after my wife was checked out, and there was nothing wrong with her, we decided that I should go and get checked out, too. I went to a fertility clinic, and...and, you see, I had this plan. I decided that when they handed me the little jar and told me to go into the room and, you know, fill it, I would have some fun with the other people in the waiting room. I decided that once I was behind the door - you don't mind me telling you this, right? - once I was behind the door, I'd start clapping my hands together, really loud, and getting faster and faster, I'd start shouting out, "Oh, Baby, just like that! Yes!" You don't mind this, right? (Smile frozen on my face, "uh huh", watching his hands clapping together, really loud, and getting faster and faster, him, like always, standing too close to me and getting closer every time I try to take a step back).
So I go into the clinic, this plan in my mind, and the receptionist hands me a jar and tells me I need to get a sample and bring it back within twenty minutes, to keep it fresh, right? I look around and say, "You don't have a private room for this?" and she said, "No, just go home, do the deed and bring it back within twenty minutes." The problem was that I live out of town - I could never go there and then bring it back quickly enough - so I had to figure out where I could go. I drove my pickup truck to a side street, but saw people walking along, and you know, you don't want to be seen doing this in your vehicle, especially near a school, am I right? (Weird guffawing laughter.) So then I went to a restaurant - I thought I could use their restroom, but as soon as I walked in the door, a bunch of people came in behind me, so that was out. I thought maybe the restroom at the library, but no, there might be kids come in. So then I just drove out of town a little bit and pulled in by that gas station there, you know the one? (I do.) I pulled in way behind it where I couldn't be seen from the road and, I have to tell you that sitting in my truck and the plastic jar and everything, it was very awkward. So, I'm concentrating on what I'm doing - we need this sample - and just as I was finishing, there was a knock on my window. I fumbled with the jar and my fly and I turned to see a woman police officer motioning for me to roll down my window. She asked me if everything was okay, guffaw, guffaw, and I said, "Never better", and she must not have been able to see what I was doing from that angle because that was that and she told me to have a nice day. Guffaw, guffaw - you have to laugh, right? How would that be for a standup routine?Gosh, what do you even say to that? "That's a story all right." And at about that moment, I got a call over my headset from the General Manager to come to cash, and I was able to make my escape. Now, the GM didn't need me at cash, but she didn't call me for no reason - two of my coworkers (to whom I had relayed some of this man's weird stories before) had been watching - the weird clapping, him touching my elbow whenever he laughed, me stepping backwards and him closing the gap every time - and they told the GM that I probably needed saving. She asked me if he smelled of alcohol, I replied that he never has any time I've talked with him, and she stressed that if he made me as uncomfortable as I looked, I don't ever need to talk to him. I told her that he seemed socially awkward, not menacing, and I don't mind being his sounding board. Besides, he buys a lot of books from our store.
After she left, my coworkers wanted to know what the story was about this time, and I barely got to the part about him wanting to "have fun" with the people in the clinic's waiting room, and Malena (lovely, feisty woman; thirty-six) cut me off with, "That's inappropriate, Krista. That's sexual harassment, making you listen to something like that. You know he's getting a kick out of telling you these things and you don't have to be polite and take it." I lamely tried to explain about the standup comedy idea and me just being a test audience, but both of my coworkers urged me to keep my distance from him from then on. I don't think of myself as naive, and I appreciate their concern, but I honestly think he's just lonely and doesn't know how to talk to people; he can barely get through one sentence without the tics and weird laughter. Just last night, after asking me what the big special for the weekend is, he said, "That makes me think of when a man's wife says they're going shopping on a Saturday, he knows he's getting lucky on Friday night. Am I right? Guffaw, guffaw." I smiled and said, "Yeah, well, I've got my own money." And he said, "No, but you know what I mean right? That's the way it is, right?" I just smiled and shook my head; what else can I do? I honestly don't think he does know "the way it is".
So there it is: between the stacks with three older men who all believe they've had interesting lives and think a book store is the ideal place to tell their stories. I would tend to agree; if I have the time, I'll listen to life stories all day long.
