Brief conversations at the store

Some customers think that people and dinosaurs coexisted. We had an interesting variation on that theme earlier this week when a group of young women from Arkansas in the Upward Bound Program visited the store. They were looking with interest at the dinosaur section, and one of the young women said, "You can believe what you want, but I don't believe in dinosaurs."

Yesterday a woman asked, "Where is the charming shopping area with quaint shops and galleries?" And in the perfect unison of a Greek chorus, the entire staff said, "In Los Alamos??" We directed her to the Art Center at Fuller Lodge and suggested downtown Santa Fe as a stop on her itinerary.

We have a toy called Hamusuta, which is a realistic little battery-powered hamster in a plastic exercise ball. A power switch is on the bottom of the toy, and when you put the hamster in the ball, it rolls around the place and changes direction when it bumps into something (for some reason, when we release it in the toy section, it rolls over to the humor books and bumps around in there for the rest of the day).

Anyway, Perry came into the workroom and said, "Peggy, you would be very proud of me." I told him that I'm always proud of him, and asked why I was proud of him then. He said, "Well, I didn't say what I wanted to say. A girl asked me how to turn on the hamster."