Excuse me, I think you dropped your manners

How rude!

So I (and this hardly ever happens to me) found myself with a few extra hours to kill yesterday and I thought what better way to spend those precious few hours than to browse through rows and rows of books at leisure, looking for a bargain, or a long forgotten author from my childhood years, or potential xmas and birthday presents. Right?

Wrong.

I've been to my share of book sales, so I know how crowded it can get and how kiasu people are and I have come to expect that I would be shoved around a bit...but people always smiled at other fellow nerds (like me) and said their pleases, excuse mes and thank yous. The only interesting thing that ever happens to me at a book sale was actually finding the book I was looking for. Seriously, that's like winning the lottery.

Yesterday, however, was a whole different game of chongak. I mean, you hardly expect bookworms to act like a pack a hyenas, each trying to scavenge a meal. People pushed past me like I was an annoying curtain in their path or placed their huge cardboard boxes right on top the rows of books you were browsing through. Some even used their boxes as battering rams, to poke and bulldoze their way through. No sorrys, no excuse me pleases, nothing. Not even a guilty glance in my direction. Then you have kids running around, stepping on my feet trying to get to mummy and daddy (or as I strongly suspect, away from mummy and daddy).

Worst, it would seem everyone decided to bring their babies, in their huge prams, while book shopping. Now, I am not saying parents with pram-bound children are expected to stay home but I am sure it is as irritating for the child as it is for the rest of us. I mean the place is dusty with all those books brought out from storage and the dirt kicked up by frantic shoppers. The poor child would be thirsty, bored and at permanent risk of developing an allergy to dust, a cold or obtaining a paper cut collection. Meanwhile we find ourselves having to constantly squeeze against the tables or back track all the way because there is no space to move once the baby pram comes down the aisle, not to mention the gridlock that causes. And no thank yous too, for all those times I moved out of the way when I see someone coming with a pram or a heavy box of books with no place to move. Hmph. So much for being considerate.

And I thought reading was a peaceful hobby. Not if these violent new-age readers with viking-esque we-must conquer-this-book-sale attitude are anything to go by.