Yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble to use my gift card from my boss. I was there for a little while when I heard a big crash… I thought to myself, “Wow, wonder what that was!”, but went on with minding my own business and browsing books. Then a mother with two children came storming down the aisle I was in, the mother said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.” I figured one of her kids knocked something over and they were hightailing it. I admit, I thought that was a horrible message to be sending your children about owning up to your own mistakes and responsibility and all that.
A few minutes later I started hearing … I’m not even sure how to describe what I was hearing, actually. It was primal… it was yelling… it was moaning. Now keep in mind, I’m partially deaf and I sometimes hear phantom noises to make up for what I can’t hear. So I was hearing these noises sort of in the background about every 15-20 seconds. I noticed other people around me were looking at each other with discomfort. I started to listen closer. Maybe I wasn’t just imagining these noises were as bad as they were. I thought maybe it was an older child having an extreme tantrum. I thought, “Why don’t the parents get that kid out of here?”. Then I thought maybe it was a group of kids messing around. By this time I had figured out that the noise was coming from the children’s section, so I decided to mosey on back there to see if I could figure it out. I got somewhat close to the children’s section when an employee stopped me and said, “The cops don’t want anyone getting any closer. He’s very ill.”
!!!!
So of course now I am intrigued beyond belief (okay, okay – I’ll call it what it is: nosy!)… and I figure out ways to browse close by to the area so I could see what happened. By now I’m understanding a bit more of what the guy is yelling at times. He’s screaming and moaning, “No!!!”, “That hurts!”, “Mother fucker!!” and mostly incomprehensible (to me) stuff – all of it extremely loud. And just scary sounding. There are cops all around and about 5 employees blocking the children’s section off and not letting anyone get close. Children are wondering aloud, “What’s going on? Why can’t we go in there? What’s that noise, mommy?”. Finally the ambulance arrives and they come rushing in with a stretcher. I was standing in line to ask customer service if they had a title I was looking for – amazing that I remembered the author and title when 20 minutes prior I thought I was ready to leave! Heh. So the stretcher goes flying by me and the guy in the back didn’t have his hands on it, so when they turned the corner, the stretcher SMACKED! into the customer service desk. All highly dramatic stuff here, folks!
By this time the customer service rep has found my book in the computer and gone to the section in the store to retreive it for me and I still need to figure out how I can stay close so I can see when this guy comes out. Will I know him? What will he look like? I noticed that the noises were pretty much died down and I wondered if they gave him a tranquilzer or something. I didn’t have to wait too terribly long for the stretcher to come back out. They had him face down with his hands behind his back, wrapped in sheets. All I could see to identify him was extremely dark black hair and possibly an unshaven cheek. I have no idea if I know him or not and it’s going to bug me that this probably won’t be in the papers or anything for me to find out what the deal was!
I’m guessing the guy was completely strung out on drugs of some sort. I found out from other customers that the loud crash in the beginning was him completely knocking down an entire bookshelf and that the cops were trying to subdue him verbally at first. Duh! It doesn’t seem as if anyone besides him got hurt, so that is good. I actually feel bad for the guy and sincerely hope he finds help. Breaks my heart to see addiction that out loud and ugly.
Anyway, with the drama over, I was free to go buy my books. The funny thing was as I was being “intrigued” and trying to stay close, the guy who had first warned me to stay back was still there guarding the section and I felt like every time I looked over he saw me. I felt like I was being so obvious in my “intrigue”, but I just couldn’t help it. So when I go up to pay, who comes walking back to the registers now that his guard duty was up? And who did I happen to get as a cashier? Ha! He didn’t say anything, though. Why I thought he would say something is beyond me… what would he say, “Yeah, I saw you were being nosy back there. Nice try, trying to be slick and under cover!” Oh – the other funny thing? Before going to Barnes & Noble, I was extremely tired and was just going there to find a book to read in bed before I took a nap! I did eventually take that nap, but it was a lot later than originally planned.
So, after all that, you want to know what I got? Some really good stuff! I bought Blue Like Jazz (which I already read as a borrowed book and loved so much I had to have my own copy) along with another book by that author: Through Painted Deserts. I also bought the sequel to Running With Scissors: Dry. And then I got two bargain books by authors I don’t know, but whose jackets looked interesting: The Playgroup (scared to read this one after reading the reviews on Amazon, though!) and Where The Money Is. I’m finishing up Girl Meets God right now, but it’s a little dry, so I think I might actually start another one and read both. I’m trying to decide which one to start first, but I’m leaning towards Through Painted Deserts.
Now, whoever said being a bookworm is boring??