Humorous Books About Cows

Here’s a story for you.

It’s funny in that you had to be there sort of way.

Though, it’s not the being there part, it’s the knowing her part.

Sharon is the her.

We worked together for much of my time at The Bookstore. We worked together in two stores.

Many stories require context. A confused high-school student looking for a book about “angry grapes” needs little context, other than mention of the proper title. In this story, Sharon is a big part of the context. If you know her, know her humor, her moods, her directness: all that context makes this a hysterical story. Not knowing her makes this an amusing anecdote.

It is my favorite bookstore story.

Christmas Eve is a hellish day to work in retail. Bookstores are their own kind of hell on that last shopping day of Christmas. Customers are generally not bookstore shoppers. They’re there because someone on their list asked for a specific book (and, they are then overly angry that we do not have that book on outboard motor repair that their nephew really wants: a book that we don’t even carry, only special order).

Then there are the people looking for a copy of the biggest seller of the season and are mad that twenty minutes before we’re closing that we’ve run out.

Then there are the people who want books that quite possibly don’t exist, or would require extensive research to find a title, and then a couple of weeks to order directly from a publisher.

Case in point.

Scene: 18 minutes prior to closing, Christmas Eve, 2003/4. Sharon and I have been assigned a certain part of the store to straighten up so it looks reasonably put together for the people working the morning of the 26th, as they’re in charge of having to take down the Christmas signs and put up all the after-Christmas signage and find and sticker all the markdowns for the after Christmas sale. They don’t have time to clean up as well.

Sharon and I are working our way through the humor section, chit-chatting, as one does to make dusting and straightening somewhat fun. Out of nowhere this frazzled woman appears. I was startled by her appearance. Sharon was unfazed and asked if there was something we could help her find.

“I’m wondering if you have any humorous books about cows?”

Sharon seems to reflect for a moment. I’ve already started biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. The question tickled me. Sharon’s pause and facial expression of seriousness, faux-seriousness for any of us who knew her told me to turn away from her face and focus on my dusting so I wouldn’t laugh out loud.
Sharon, after a suitable pause answered the woman: “No. There aren’t any humorous books about cows because there’s nothing remotely funny about cows.”

In typical Sharon fashion, she took her duster and moved around the corner to the next aisle, leaving me there, trying desperately not to let out the laughter that had been building inside of me. I managed, in a serious tone, to tell the woman that I agreed that there weren’t really any funny books about cows that I was aware of. I offered to take her to one of the computers and see if we could find something but, sadly, it would take a week or more the book to arrive. She sighed heavily. No, it was a book she’d need for the next day.

She was one of the most dejected retreating people I’ve ever seen.

After the woman walked away, from one aisle over, came Sharon’s loud cackle.

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