From whence the title came.
Fact: people ought to be more contrite when they demand things at the bookstore. Most of the times that I nearly bite my tongue off to keep from laughing (or spitting like a lama into someone's eye) are the result of the overconfidence of blithering idiots. Not to say that there aren't wonderfully intelligent and kind people who make working at the store a pleasure. There are, and they DO. But idiots make working there a whole other kind of pleasure. Does that make me mean-spirited and naughty? Perhaps.

But take, for example, the well coiffed and manicured Rochester teen who glides haughtily up to the desk snapping her gum. "Hello," I begin. "What can I help you find?" There is a silence, and the snapping of gum as the gears in her mind begin oh-so-slowly to turn. She glances down her Roman nose at me. Then, clearing the gum to the side of her mouth, she states, "When I drop dead."

Eh? What then? I realize it's a title. I'm none the wiser. "Do you know who the author is? " I inquire. She pauses again, seems annoyed that she's even here, and then shrugs apathetically. "I don't know... Fooker? Flocker? Some guy on our book list."

SQUWAK! It hits me like a stack of books falling from the top shelf in the art section. You know-- those BIG coffee table tomes that weigh more than most of the doe-eyed innocents running about the children's section. "You...y...Do you mean...William Falkner's... As I Lay Dying???

She doesn't blink. Snap, snap. "Yeah."

This sort of thing happens every day. Every Day. There are many people who have the good grace to admit that they really can't remember the title, or that they could be wrong. However there are other people who insist that the world has conspired against them because we can't find the book that they have just invented. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, is Fate tittering into its hands as we blindly flail at the keyboard, left to the mercy of a woman who swears her book club is reading something enigmatically entitled Lonely Legs? And when the book, in actuality, is called The Lovely Bones, are we congratulated, even thanked?? Well...ok. Sometimes we are. Thank god. Life is worth living after all.