I won’t let myself leave a local book store without buying anything, hence I only visit when I’m out of reading material.

Probably plays back into when I helped watch my father’s and mother’s trade show tables respectively. My father would sell sports cards back in the 90s and he was lucky to have one paying customer all day at an event we had spent all morning setting up for.

My mother used to paint whimsical designs on chunks of wood (toll painting) and set up a table of her painted wood art various church sales. I saw the hours my mom had spent tracing and painting those dumb little seasonal characters, only to see these rich bitches saunter by her table, turn her work over, say “That’s cute!”, And walk on.

To this day I will not walk into an antique store or junk shop or book store without at least ten bucks to burn. It feels gross to take up a shopkeeps time and space without buying something.