Mirror Incidents

It’s fascinating how many connections can be drawn between bookselling and life. One showed up yesterday and I’m still chuckling over it. Eric and I had passed on an estate sale Saturday because in the ad the company had stuck the crucial word books next to the lethal word toys, minus the important word VINTAGE. But my antiques dealer buddy Darwin sent me a note Saturday afternoon to say that they had a lot of books and people were walking around with four or five each. He couldn’t  guarantee their quality, but just wanted to give me the heads up. So yesterday we dutifully piled into the car and headed off to Akron for half price day. At first glance the shelves looked grimmer than the Reaper himself which of course made me wonder how good the departed books had been. I gave what was left a desultory look and was just about to call it a day when I spotted what looked like a brown cardboard box on the coffee table.

I walked over to have a look only to find that it wasn’t a box at all. It was two seemingly new books in plain, but pristine, jackets the color of brown paper bags. I opened  them (backwards and upside down) and found two identical  Missouri history and genealogical titles published in 1959. Well, there’s a nice surprise, yes? Definitely, but  it got even more surprising when an estate sale worker handed  me a plastic bag and said, “Here – put those in there and fill it up for $5.”

Normally I’m not much of a bag day sort of girl, but I had seen some shiny new stuff I figured Eric could use for the store, so off I went, bag flying like a banner. Immediately an older title on the theory of solids (you know how I much I love that mysterious technical stuff) enthusiastically jumped in with the Missouri gang . And then  a 1943 centennial history of a Catholic church in Philadelphia sailed in behind it. After that though it was strictly ISBNville, but never mind. By the time I got done my four books priced out at $170 and Eric’s four shiny new ones at $55. Not bad for a bad sale!

After that we were so pleased with ourselves we headed off to Home Goods to buy a mirror. Three years ago we remodeled the bathroom in the  upstairs hall (which I immediately appropriated except for when the kids are here), but  never got around to getting a new mirror for it because I couldn’t find anything I liked at the time. We had had one of those generic plain plate glass ones, so back up it went and there it has remained ever since. Oddly enough it seemed that the people of Akron must have been harboring similar mirror stories because as soon as we got out of the car we spotted a couple,  a man, and a young woman each lugging a mirror to their cars.

“Maybe they’re having a sale,” Eric said.

They weren’t, but you’d sure never have guessed it. The fairly small mirror section looked like Filene’s basement at the annual bridal gown sale. We whipped out our tape measure, as did the ten or twelve other mirror buyers, and dug in. Finally I narrowed it down to three I liked, but when I couldn’t  make a decision in two and a half seconds Eric drifted away. Naturally, that’s when  a clutch of NEW mirror buyers showed up, pulled out their measuring tapes and joined the fray. What do I do? Get the contemporary one? Or the traditional one with the nice molding? Or the traditional one that can’t decide if it’s gold, silver or something in between  Zap! The contemporary one is gone.  So then – the traditional with the molding, or the traditional that can’t decide …

Zap! The traditional with the molding is gone too, so that leaves only the traditional silvery, goldy, something-elsey. I  looked around for Eric, panic  building like a  tower of blocks, but he’d evaporated into  thin air. There was no choice. I had to wrestle this enormous thing, darn near as tall I am, to the floor and then stand there hanging on to it until he showed up. Which he did. Eventually.

“Does this remind you of anything?” I asked mildly.

“Well, you didn’t seem ready to go, so I thought I’d look for a new pad for the rug.”

All that was visible of me was my head and my fingers clutching the frame on both sides. But slowly the light dawned.

“Oh! Sorry about that,” he mumbled, relieving  me of the mirror. He picked it up like it was nothing more than a large newspaper and strode off toward the check-out leaving me to follow, bemused by the fact that he still hadn’t made the obvious connection.

I thought about mentioning that the reason I could even tussle with a  mirror the size of an iceberg is because of the many times I’ve been backed into corners clutching piles of books as thick as the Manhattan telephone directory with no place to put them.

But I didn’t have to.

“Well, look at it this way, “ he said. “At least there weren’t any scanners.”