The Best Kind of Store
If I asked you to guess my favorite kind of store in the world, you’d probably say, “a bookstore,” right? You’d be close, but wrong. My favorite kind of store is actually the kind that sells office supplies. It doesn’t matter much if it’s a little mom-and-pop (not that there are many of those left anymore) or one of the Officestaplesdepotmax superstores. Big or small, I just love ‘em. In the same way I could spend hours and hours browsing a wonderful bookstore — my second favorite kind of store in the world — I can lose myself in the aisles of an office supply store, wandering dumb and happy among the boxes of pens and reams of paper, the rulers and paper clips and notebooks and markers and binders and printer cartridges and wastebaskets and desks and chairs and copy machines and stickers and folders and tape and … well, you get the idea. Aside from pens and paper once in a while, I seldom need any of it. Nor do I usually have the money to make more than a small purchase or two. But that doesn’t matter. It’s the looking, not the buying. It’s just being there. That’s enough.
I feel comfortable confessing this rather unusual love affair because I’ve talked to so many other people in my life who feel the same way. We may be strange, but we are many.
What is it about office supplies that attracts us? Is it a memory thing? A throwback to that day each summer when we had to get ready for the start of the new school year and mom would take us to the dime store to get supplies? Maybe so. Maybe, as we browse along the hundred-yard aisles full of pens or compare prices on 5,000-sheet cartons of paper, we’re actually remembering the joy of a new pair of scissors and a shiny plastic pencil box.
My own best memory doesn’t go back all the way to my school days. It goes back only about 22 years, to those heady days when I was getting ready to launch the magazine Horrorstruck and needed to set up my home office. Armed with a five-page shopping list and a pocket full of money, my wife and I visited several wonderful office supply stores and ultimately loaded up the car with absolutely everything that I would need. To be brutally honest, it was probably more than I would need. It was certainly more than I needed to run a small magazine out of a small apartment in suburban Chicago. It was most likely enough to outfit an office at a Fortune 500 company. It was overkill, but what a way to go. And it was a pleasure that kept on giving, because after we got the stuff home and lugged it up three flights of stairs and stuffed it into the corner of the living room that was going to be the Horrorstruck World Headquarters, I got to unwrap everything and find a niche for it and organize it and then stare at it happily for a while, fully satisfied.
That wasn’t the beginning of my love affair with office supplies, just another stop along the way. I should probably be a little concerned that I can remember that day so clearly, but I’m not; I’ve long ago surrendered to the fact that I’m helplessly, hopelessly hypnotized by this stuff, that the thrill other guys get from power tools and fast cars, I get from a new pen, a pretty pencil cup and an unopened spiral notebook.
I’m thinking about all this today because my wife and I are going to the office supply store a little later. Given where we live these days, that’s quite a commitment — a drive of 50 miles each way. And we’re not going to buy a lot. We’re actually just looking for a little bit of cheap paper, some bargain stuff made from recycled sugarcane waste that comes highly recommended for fountain pen users. But of course buying the paper will be only one small part of the experience. The greater part will be getting lost in those marvelous aisles, exploring, navigating those narrow passes winding between mountains of things I don’t need, can’t afford, and don’t even really want, but which I find wonderful and absolutely beautiful all the same.
Tags: Fountain Pens, Horrorstruck, Office Supplies, Officestaplesdepotmax, Paper Clip Love
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