The Lost Girl in Bankrupt Borders....

Yup, I was there in Ann Arbor, presiding over the everything-must-go sale of the flagship Borders bookstore. Ahead of me in the very very (very) long line were many oddities; the oddest of the odd was an apparently Confused Young Man buying not only a pictorial calendar of John F. Kennedy and a copy of Glenn Beck's Broke, but also a copy of The Carrot Principle, which I was very happy to find out is NOT about juicing.

Me, I stood in that very very (very) long line rubbernecking to beat the band (two bookcases to the gentleman with the goatee and the PAWS dog! A chin-high stack of graphic novels to the giggling middle-schoolers! A bargain basement copy of The Feminine Mystique for sixty-nine cents to the woman possibly yearning for the good ol' days before acrylic nails and werewolves for boyfriends!) and waiting for spend my five dollars on:

Backing into Forward by Jules Feiffer

and

Samuel Johnson, by the

(adorable!) Peter Martin.

I got through the very very (very) long line just as a little girl turned around and realized her parents were nowhere to be seen. She burst into tears---hot, hard, painful tears. The security guard walked over; so did a couple of store employees. My ex-boyfriend G* and I hovered for a minute or two, watching. You know. Just to make sure that everything was all right.

I had to hug G tight. The poor man's eyes were filled with tears.

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*He of the plastic bucket fame!