There
it is: you’re having a great time. You’ve set up your shop to face another
working day; you’ve had your first coffee of the morning; the sun is shining; birds
are singing; you’re ready to greet your first customer with grace and
equanimity. And here they come:
They
smile and approach the shop-counter; they look around themselves in seeming
wonder; and then they breathlessly say:
“Wow!
Have you read all of these books?”
Boom!
Thunder rolls; birds splat on the pavement having been struck by lightning; the
sun disappears like someone turned off the switch; the coffee grumbles in the
pit of your stomach. You twitch your upper lip into a sneer:
“Why,
yes,” you say, “yes - I have. There’s not much work involved in selling books
so I have to fill up all that time somehow.”
“Gosh,”
they exclaim, looking around wide-eyed, and, if they’re really stupid, they go
on to say, “it must be so much fun to work in a blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah...”
(See:
Canto I – The Waystation of the Ignorant.)
If
you’re feeling particularly blunt-instrument-y, you might answer with the much
more direct:
“What
do you think?”
In
this case, they back away, still smiling, just a little more fixedly, like a
bunny in the headlights, feeling that something is expected of them and that
they’re not going to like it, no matter how it turns out. And it turns out
badly.
Boom!
No comments:
Post a Comment