Dear Preschoolers in Barnes and Noble

Congratulations.  Your school is having a book fair at Barnes and Noble today.  Know where a better place for that would be?  Your school, where I would never go.

I didn't go to some fancy preschool.  I spent my time before kindergarten reading in the lobby of my Dad's auto detailing shop.  I didn't get dragged off to Barnes and Noble to get some new shiny books and hang out with my little nihilist preschool friends.  I didn't get to take a nap in the comfy reading chairs near the magazines.  If I fell asleep on the waiting room bench, my uncles would tie my shoelaces together.  Then, they would yell that the Three Stooges were on in the back room, so that I would try to get up and run to watch the TV.  It was Vietnam in that detailing shop.  I slept with one eye open.

I will go on record and say that I did not try to trip that little boy in the Fiction A-D section.  He ran between me and the shelf and tripped over my shoe, so his mom doesn't need to give me the stink eye.  It's not that I wouldn't have tripped him had I thought of it.  I just wasn't paying attention. 

You see, children, you've forgotten what respect is, or your parents never taught it to you.  If I went running through a store, I would have been in big trouble.  Your parents don't seem to care as long as you are leaving them alone so that they can have a moment's peace.

You know what else you've forgotten?  You've forgotten that you need to be afraid.  That little girl shouldn't have turned to her mother and said "That big man just growled like a dog!"  She should have done like her mother did and looked at me quickly, then move to another aisle.

Guess who Barnes and Noble likes more: me or you?  It's me, a return customer with disposable income.  I have that because I have a job.  You just sit around all day sipping juice and being read to.  Child labor laws are crippling the motivation of today's youth. 

Oh, yeah, and do you little terrorists know where all of your mothers got the money to buy you those books?  I put it on their dressers when I left in the morning.