Ha! Hindsight is 20/20. Well, I’m sure she still had plenty to tell her friends afterward. People kept (correctly) assuming that we were a bunch of blasphemous Queer folk at that store, so we all experienced a few encounters like that

It also has the rare instance of adults who are let in on the magic and try to help when it goes too far (yes, you were drowned by a fey creature and came back wrong, but let’s have you checked out by a doctor if the local wizard can’t fix the problem)

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and the Moon of Gomrath are good if you want to read about plucky British children having a magical adventure before they realize that brushing up against local folklore will fundamentally change them beyond their understanding.

Hahaha just because it’s too expensive to get diagnosed doesn’t mean it’s entirely unlikely!

At one point, the store owner found their street stand, leapt out of her car in the middle of morning traffic, and shouted, “I KNOW IT’S YOU! I’LL FIND YOU! I’LL GET YOU THIS TIME!” before getting back in her car.

I still don’t know if she ever caught them in the act.

She was determined to catch the sock thief in the act. She had multiple workers watching the sock stand at all times. I often found her hunched over the security camera footage. It didn’t matter. The sock thief still won every time

(I did not. I was too literal. “He’s not MY dad, he’s a STATUE.”)

That makes sense. I think there’s more of a boundary in Catholicism where Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are described as separate parts of the whole. We also had a statue of Joseph in my church growing up, and kids would put flowers there on Father’s Day and everything.

I was so confused that my ex-Catholic ass said the first thing that came to mind lmao

“You were supposed to say JESUS.”

“But Jesus had two dads,” I said. “God and Joseph.”

I’ve never seen someone so close to physically exploding before.

Fun addition of things multiple older men have claimed could turn someone gay in a bookstore:

Glossy pages
A book on grilling titled MEAT
Illustrated books
Winnie the Pooh
The entire fantasy section
A book about pirates
BTS
Daniel Striped Tiger books
A book with a woman on the cover

3) If you see a parent with an anxious vibe standing in the mythology section, their kid probably likes Percy Jackson

4) Romance readers are always the quickest on the draw with recommendations

5) You can’t have big squishy chairs because people WILL have sex on them

The only other time I saw a crowd that big for a book signing was for a YouTube nerdy-baking personality, and the crowd was mostly middle-schoolers who did NOT climb the shelves. Most book signings were chill and involved staff checking in with the author to talk about their books