Comment of the Day, May 18, 2007

Baby Kaos and I went to a new bookstore today. A new used bookstore. I'm not down with paying new prices for books.

We don't get over to the other side of town much, and that's where the bookstore is. We were on our way back from shopping at the secondhand baby clothes store. It's my new favorite store, but that's a different blog.

So, we go in to the used bookstore, and we're the only customers. No biggie.

The owner, who is an older woman, greeted us and asked if she could help us. I told her we were looking for children's books.

“Well,” she said, “I have some here, but he's a little young for those.”

She was pointing to “The Cat In The Hat”.

“And we have some over here, too,” she said.

“Baby Kaos,” I said, “Look! It's 'The Cat In The Hat'! You know this book!”

In other words, beeyatch, don't tell me my kid's too young for “The Cat In The Hat” because my son is a genius because we read to him everyday.

So we start looking at the books. And the owner starts talking. She asked if she could hold Baby Kaos, “After all,” she said, “I'm a grandma. You know grandmas when you see them, don't you Baby?”

I said, “Well, he's not had much lunch and he's pretty tired, so I don't think he's the best company right now.”

And she kinda disregarded what I said and did that thing that people do with their hands when they're getting ready to hold a baby—the “clap, clap, come 'ere” maneuver. You're done it. You know it.

Fortunately, Baby Kaos leaned his head into my shoulder. He's a great performer. But, she still didn't get the clue that he wasn't interested in her.

She kept talking. I learned all about that she's the mom of twins and that she has two granddaughters that live in California and that the granddaughters want her to move down to California but that she can't afford to live there and that they don't live in a great neighborhood and houses are sill $600,000.

“Do you mind if we look around?” I asked. I'm trying to make us scarce and be polite.

We start to walk away. Just walking around looking at books is really the entire reason I wanted to go in there anyway.

We're about 2/3 of the way through the store and I hear her say, “Are you a Christian?”

Sweet Jesus. You coulda knocked me over with a feather.

“No,” I said.

She said, “Well, if you were, I was going to tell you that we have a lot of Christian books for children.”

I said, “Thanks. We have lots of Christian friends, so we'll be sure to tell them.”

And we left shortly thereafter. I was a bit concerned that she was going to baptize Baby Kaos.

When Baby Kaos and I got out to the truck, I said to him, “If that dumb beeyatch would've looked at our noses, she would've known that we're a bunch of Jews!”