Yuppie Puppy
I had one of those nice days today, where time just flies by and you get to leave work early because that’s the way you were scheduled. Never mind that you had a weekend off, nothing ever feels quite so nice as getting to leave work before your mind perceives you should.

So I did what I often do on nice, sunny get-out-of-jail-free days: I went to the bookstore.

Hey, I’m a nerd. What do you expect from me?

I love the bookstore. It is a warm, inviting, happy place that smells of coffee and paper, with big, fat, squashy chairs and miles of books that I can read. I visit the bookstore often. It is a refuge from the world, and oftentimes a refuge from my loud-ass mind, which has a tendency not to shut up and can be very difficult to live with. I plan to one day ship my mind to Tijuana, where I am quite sure it will get thoroughly drunk and come back with a tattoo and a prostitute girlfriend. Anyway.

Like any frequent visitor of a place, I tend to have a routine, a set path that my feet take me whenever I decide to visit Bookland. First, I absolutely must go to the bathroom. I have no idea what it is about the bookstore. I never have to go before I get in there, but the minute those doors close behind me it is a mad dash to whatever far corner holds the bathrooms. Maybe it’s a Pavlovian response from all those years of reading the in bathroom; I don’t know.

Don’t look at me like that.

Anyway. So then I wander to the manga / graphic novel / sci-fi section. I spend a nice long time there, reading books I probably won’t ever buy. Now this makes me feel alternately like a rebel and like a guilt-ridden shoplifter. I am stealing words. This inherent guilt is never a problem, except when, like today, there is a random bookstore employee working in the section I am loitering in. They never say anything to me, or even look at me, but I still feel like they are secretly despising my very existence for having the balls to read and not buy. And I know that is a load of crap, I used to work at a bookstore. Nobody cares. But I still get all sweaty and nervous.

Look, don’t look at me like that.

It’s not as if a good portion of their revenue doesn’t come from the coffee shop, where everyone goes to drink stuff while they read things we all know they won’t buy. It’s totally part of the mega-bookstore philosophy. I swear.

Anyway.

At this particular bookstore, they put the manga and the sci-fi next to each other in the back right, and then lead me along to the other sections by tweaking my interest with the poetry and the music books. So I let myself be led, and soon found myself in a fat, comfy chair with some books. Some lady came by to see if the other chair was empty, but figured it wasn’t, since there was some guy’s glasses and a book sitting in front of it. After a little bit, the guy came back to the chair and sat down. I wasn’t really paying attention, cause, hey, book, but a few minutes later I glanced up to find that the man was asleep.

This was the cutest thing I had ever seen. He was so adorable, all curled up in the squashy chair, wearing his little yuppie-shirt and his tie and his slacks. He looked maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, and all I could think was “awwww, a hard day of office work has tuckered him out!” I had the exact same feeling I get when I see my cat fall asleep on her back in the sun, and it’s all I can do not to go over there and rub my face in her warm belly. I just wanted to pet him, he was so cute. He was just like a little yuppie puppy.

I certainly didn’t want to wake him, so I quietly got a new book, quietly came back, and quietly sat down, making sure that I could sneak peeks at him over my book. I swear that it was not as stalkerish as it sounds. I swear.

Really, don’t look at me like that.

So maybe twenty minutes go by, when his phone goes off, real soft-like. I thought that he had received a call, but he just pokes at it, gets up, grabs his glasses and leaves. And I realize that he had programmed his alarm to wake, which made me realize that he had PLANNED to fall asleep, and what originally had been a cute, tuckered-out yuppie nap was actually a power nap deliberately taken in the middle of the day.

Well, I felt like someone had just kicked a puppy.

I mean, who takes their power naps in a bookstore? That’s not cute, that’s just weird! I want my cute, tired puppy back! I swear if I had had a camera and didn’t care a bit how creepy it might have seemed, I would have taken a picture of him so I could have shared his adorableness with the world. But now he has cheapened it. Boo. Bad puppy.

Don’t look at me like that. I know I have issues. I am learning to cope with them. The fact that I can’t pronounce them is totally not my problem. My imaginary therapist says that maybe one day I can interact with society for real, instead of just in my head.

I still want a yuppie puppy for a pet. Will you please get me one for Christmas? I promise to be ever so good. I promise to pay my bills on time and not read so much slash fanfiction when I probably should be doing constructive things, and I promise never to lie again. I even promise to buy something next time I go to a bookstore. I swear. Honest.

Drat.