Note: Camacho, this post is for you. While several of my friends will find this funny, I thought that you in particular would get a kick out of it. So, Internet, if you're annoyed that it's not a Lola post, go beat him up.
Okay, that last part might not be accurate.
And anyway, fuck it, it's my blog and I'll do what I want with it.
I recently got a job at a pretty rockin' awesome used bookstore chain, which will remain nameless because I haven't read the employee handbook yet and I don't know if blogging about my job is grounds for being fired (although Texas is an at-will state so they can pretty much fire me any time they want to anyway). So I won't tell you where I work. Let's just call it Fifty Percent Literature.
The other day, I was stocking the Science Fiction/Fantasy section at Fifty Percent Literature. I kinda like stocking paperbacks in general, and as a Sci/Fan buff I'm always happy when that section needs some work. A friendly guy with an adorable blonde one-year-old on his shoulders approached me, needing help with a book. The conversation went like this:
Friendly Guy: Hi, I'm looking for a book, I always look for it when I come in here, a friend recommended it to me, it's a Sci-Fi book, and I just can't remember the author today.
Me: Do you know the title?
Friendly Guy, looking sheepish: No, sorry... It's older, something by one of the grandfathers of science fiction... Maybe from the fifties or sixties... I don't know, it's usually right around here, you guys keep changing where everything is.
Me, noting that we are in the "C"s: Arthur C. Clarke?
Friendly Guy: Yes! That's it!
Me, jocularly: Well, as long as it's not 2001 it's all right that you couldn't remember the title.
Friendly Guy, scanning the Clarkes: Actually, no... I don't think this is it...
Me, choosing the "grandfather" next closest to the "C"s: Isaac Asimov?
Friendly Guy: No...
Me: Robert Heinlein?
Friendly Guy: Yes! Yes! Heinlein!
Me, suddenly jubilant: Okay, I can definitely help you there! I know pretty much everything about Heinlein's books. Do you, um, have any idea of the title?
Friendly Guy: No, I'm sorry... It's something to do with Blood-Brothers or Water-Brothers... It's his most famous book.
Me, skeptically: Stranger in a Strange Land?
Friendly Guy: Yes! Oh my god, that's incredible!
Yeah, no shit! I thought. But he was so nice that I couldn't really be annoyed with him.
I may have expressed some slight disapproval of Stranger in a Strange Land as we walked over to the "H"s to get it (thank god we had a copy!), with the end result that I also sold him The Number of the Beast, and told him to get Starship Troopers and Moon is a Harsh Mistress as soon as he has the chance. He'd never heard of Starship Troopers -- not even the movie, can you believe it? He made me write them down. I explained, perhaps a trifle forcefully, that Starship Troopers is one of the best books ever written.
Oh, and don't judge me for picking Number of the Beast. My other options were Friday, Job, and Sail Beyond the Sunset. Our Heinlein selection is really thin right now.
So I took a guy who was saying "I want the famous book that's supposed to be in the Cs!" and got him the actual Heinlein book he was thinking of. I so totally rock.
Epilogue Number One: When I returned to the Sci-Fi section, another customer who had overheard the whole thing asked if I was really that big a fan of Heinlein, because he had tried Stranger in a Strange Land at the insistence of a Rastafarian friend, and he found it rather dated. I agreed that it was dated, and yeah maybe kinda crappy, and explained that Heinlein's political philosophy is much more awesome than his free-love-as-religion rant.
Epilogue Number Two: One of my co-workers then came up to me and said, "Wouldn't it be awesome if that guy came back and said to you, 'I totally grok this book'?"
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