Had to get a car battery today, so I went to Sears, inside a mall. While they worked on the car I decided to waste some time walking through the mall, something I haven’t done in about three years.

No bookstores. There used to be two in that mall, but they’re gone. Apparently they both closed and moved out a couple of years ago.

So I went across the street to Borders, to do some browsing and waste some more time.

There was an appalling lack of Arthur C. Clarke in the science fiction section.

I was thinking about Keith Olbermann’s dad passing away, and Keith talking about how he read James Thurber’s short stories to him. So I decided to hunt a good Thurber collection down. Couldn’t find anything on the shelves, so I went up to the pretty young thing behind the counter.

“Do you have any Thurber collections in stock?”

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Thurber, James Thurber.”

She looked confused. “And how do you spell that?”

I did a silent facepalm.

But she was hot, so who cares.