5I Like My Point of View
If you ask anyone to describe Erica, you will probably get one of the following responses…
"She's so pretty! There's no way she won't win prom queen this year."
"I wish I had her hair, so shiny-silky smooth. You couldn't make it frizz if you tried."
"OhmyGod, she's so NICE! Why are you asking me about her, go talk to her yourself, she'll totally talk to you, OHMYGOD!"
Erica's very being is glorified from all social ranks in high school. From her teachers, you will hear how brilliant she is, except in math. She was cursed to an eternal A- in math. From her friends you will hear how she is the most charismatic of anyone to have ever lived, with the exception of one person—Jesus. From the nerds, you will hear how perplexed they are at how someone so smart can be so beautiful, popular, and have 20/20 vision without the aid of glasses.
You would not hear any of these things about me.
If you asked someone to describe me, you would get an overwhelming amount of responses similar to the following…
"She's dangerous in a book store."
My crazy book adventure started one day when my friend Kara and I were at Barnes and Noble. We were always known for doing strange and random things, and that day was no exception. We thought it would be cute to go through the books and put post-it notes with inspirational quotes on the pages. Actually, some of them were not really inspirational, but rather quotes that would brighten up anyone's day. Some of my favorites were, "This is in Spanish when you're not looking," "Canada owes me $5 in real quarters," and "History if full of dead people." Needless to say, I think my abs got flatter from laughing so hard. There is no way to keep a straight face when you put a post-it note that says "In case of emergency: break dance!" into Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton. We thought about using "Simon says terrible things about you," but we figured that might do more harm then help.
We started in the self-help section, and by the time we made it to the second row of Fiction/Literature, I consciously noticed what my subconscious had been trying to tell me ever since I picked up Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Dr. Susan Jeffers, Ph.D.
Not all books are created equal. In fact, they are very, very different. Painfully different, if I may say so myself.
It hit me when I was flipping through A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. Obviously books are different. They have distinct plotlines, subplot lines, characters, settings, and points of view. Whatever, that goes without saying. This is not what bothered me.
It was the physical characteristics of each bound collection of pages that made me want to knock myself out with a brick. There were hard covers, paperbacks, large print and pocket sized, Times New Roman and Courier New, 11 point and 12 point, single and double spaced, page numbers in the top corner and page numbers on the bottom.
My head hurt. At this point, I knew I had 2 options: 1.) Run out of Barnes and Noble in a fit of panic, undoubtedly tarnishing my reputation forever for a bunch of people I didn't know or 2.) proceed to re-arrange the offensive materials in such a way that I would no longer be bothered.
I opted for the latter.
I started with the hard covers. Kara watched on, with a confused, questioning look on her face. I think she asked me what I was doing, but I continued to pull and place books n an order only I could understand. I'm not sure why I did it. I'm not sure if I was being obsessive-compulsive, if I was acting as a medium for something good, or if I was just possessed by something evil. Regardless of why, I tore those shelves apart and then put them back together as I saw fit.
Approximately 53 minutes and 6 shelves later, my intriguing view on how books should be arranged gained some publicity, specifically from the employees. Three workers watched on, twirling their lanyards absentmindedly, clearly enthralled until the manager broke the mood with a booming voice that shook his abnormally large body and the books on the shelves.
"What is going on here!? Why do you feel the need to put these works of art out of their specific order!?"
Kara instantly jumped to my defense, "We're sorry, truly, but there was a bit of a problem." She paused, her face contorted with confusion. Kara was normally one of the most convincing liars I know, but now she was at a loss for words.
While any excuse wouldn't have made the manager's face stop from going beet red to a deep purple, the lack of an excuse made his ears steam. That man's head was going to explode. With his hand shaking, the manager pointed to the door and, as politely as he could, told us to "Get the hell out of my store!"
We power walked out of there, but not before leaving one last mark; a yellow Post-it note stuck innocently to the door leading to the outside world.
"Do it big or stay in bed."