I must be a strange attractor.

Last Saturday I decided to go out to breakfast to the nearby Greentree Panera. After a nice danish and tea, I noticed that the unsold and remaindered bookstore that had been in the mall closer to Pittsburgh had moved into the Panera complex. Since I hadn't been in a bookstore since the trip to California, I decided to browse, but not purchase.

While wandering the aisles, I didn't really find anything demanding urgent purchase, but I found a couple possibilities. However, my quiet browsing was disrupted by the very loud question of someone who just entered.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY LOUIS BROMFIELD BOOKS?"

Now, the tone of this query was amazing. Not only was he not using his inside voice, he was getting audibly upset, at the lack of books. Specifically, books of Louis Bromfield. Now please note that as I was standing there contemplating this, I sort of knew the name was familiar. But only familiar to me in the sense of "I've seen this name in a literary guide somewhere, but only there. Not in any question I've heard in a tournament, not in practice. Maybe once at best." I had placed him first half of the 20th century, novelist, American. (All of which was later confirmed.) However, given that, and the fact that I couldn't for the life of me come up with a title of a Louis Bromfield book, I became increasingly amazed the question was even asked. I was just a customer, and I knew for sure the answer was no, I had more certainty than the clerk (who from a previous, much less loud conversation with another customer, I knew was only working Saturdays while doing summer classes, and since this had only opened three weeks prior, she had three days experience.) I thought about making comment, this being a remaindered and unsold bookstore, not a used bookstore, and I doubted that he'd been published since the 60's. (Amazon proves me wrong, of course, but it was a good bet.) I decided I didn't need to assert myself into this.

Now five minutes later, I had moved down a row, and I hear the following.

"CAN YOU LOOK IN YOUR CATALOG"
"Sir?"
"CAN YOU LOOK IN YOUR CATALOG FOR LOUIS BROMFIELD?"
"Sir, I can check the computer but..."
"JUST LOOK!"

Now please note he was screaming this from the "Literature" section, okay, shelf, and having only been in existence for three weeks, the store hasn't had time to get that far out of alphabetical order. And yet, he is delivering these lines with such a combination of conviction, anger, and offense at having failed his task, my mind is running this scenario through and thoughts like "Great, he's unbalanced AND literate, and if he shoots her, I'm the only hostage he can take. I hope he hasn't seen me." are floating past.

Well, he decides to storm off instead, and I'm left to reflect on this. Possibly this was the craziest random event to pass by me in quite a time. And what put it over the top was this. I'm used to... No let's say I'm familiar...with people acting like borderline psychotics berating people as subhuman for being insufficiently hardcore in literature. It's just I've never been there and not had a buzzer to shut them up with.