Today I would like to say a few words about my good friend borders, not to commemorate death – but to commemorate life. Borders wasn’t just a friend, but it was a family for me. Amazon may offer cheaper merchandise, but they don’t have restrooms you can use if you’re having an emergency.
When I was a child, Borders represented my indoctrination into the world of books. It offered a brightly colored, tactile, and tangible jungle for me to explore. I remember roaming around the towering shelves with a sense of wonder – hoping nothing would fall on me. The newest in 90’s hits played over the speakers: the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Alanis Morisette, the Smashing Pumpkins. The smell of coffee and chocolate banana muffins wafted into my nostrils. As I leafed through the pages of each book, a hundred different fantasies entered me through the touch of my fingers tips.
As a young adult I began my employment at Borders. Like any good book, Borders had its share of characters, and I have to wonder to myself – where will these characters make their home now?
When I signed up for the job, I was required to take an online personality test – which I failed twice – you can only imagine the effect on my self-esteem. Luckily, my friend M worked in the café, and as the old cliché goes, it’s not what you know, but who you know that counts.
M is my magical Gaysian friend who towers above me at a height of almost 6’3. I, on the other hand, am a vertically challenged leprechaun barely tall enough to ride the tea cups at Disney world.
Every day M drank an iced 6 shot latte with a double pump of caramel. After which he concocted drinks that were both strange and surprisingly delicious. He gave me a flow chart of how to keep the café clean that read something like: Does it sparkle? If not, make it sparkle.
Borders was a haven for groups of people who weren’t into things like bars, clubs, or friends. In the back right corner we had our Manga section and the fox eared kids who lived there. One of the gentlemen who resided in the manga section was an aspiring priest in his late twenties. Every day he wore goggles, sweatpants, and drank an indulgence of soda water, almond, hazelnut, and coconut syrup. He described it as a carbonated Almond Joy.
Yet even more eccentric was the Professor. His formula for a tasty snack was a chocolate chip brownie microwaved at exactly 49 seconds. It didn’t matter what I was doing, even if I was cleaning the juice out of the garbage cans he would talk to me about his computer program that could predict the patterns of the housing market.
In addition to these lovable eccentrics, there were other story book characters who must’ve escaped from the pages of the books themselves: Probably to use the restroom, or catch a nap on the sofa.
A gnome slept in the gardening section, although some co-workers argued that he was “Father Time”. More practical was the theory that he was a hobo.
However, in this story I am going to insist that he was a gnome. But anyhow, everyday without fail, the gnome would come to the café to check the time and then ask for “a bloody cup of hot water.” What he used the hot cup of water for; I’m not sure, since he didn’t appear to have any tea on him.
One day, he gave me something he called his Business Card. It was the name of a Vision Improvement Center with directions to a pawn shop scribbled on top. He said if I wanted to make money, I should meet him on Sundays, when he’s there. Perhaps he was going to show me his Gardening tools.
Santa Claus, a heavy but jolly man with white stubble, came almost nightly and always left a generous tip of 5 dollars. Then he would complain about Obama, and the failure of the Borders Business model – which he ended up being right about. Perhaps this financial wisdom is what has been keeping Santa in business all these centuries.
The people who weren’t regulars of Borders have consoled grieving customers by saying, “at least you can go to Barnes and Nobles.”- Barnes and Nobles, a store with such a sterile atmosphere that you could safely get heart surgery on a shelf.
Borders was a store so friendly that we would let people sit in our cafe all day, use the internet, and read books – all without buying a single thing. It was our ludicrously generous policies that ultimately put us out of business: 40% off coupons on everything and a free coffee for every five purchased.
If anyone let Borders fail, it was not the hardworking employees at the stores – it was the employees at a corporate level. They had us try to sell “glitter balls” with each purchase, for five bucks a pop. Is it so hard to imagine why Borders failed when our best plan was “glitter balls?”
Yes, with death there is creation. We are entering an era reminiscent of the Printing Press boom of the 17th century. Scribes who embellished royal scrolls with gold leaf were replaced by legions of ink blocks. Ultimately the Printing Press was a good thing, it unlocked a world of literature for a class of people who never even held a book.
Today, e-readers are enabling more authors than ever before to publish their work. Stories are cheaper and thus more people around the world are reading.
Yet with the death of Borders, comes the death of living breathing characters who exited the two dimensional pages of a book to come to life. Gone is the tactile interaction with lore. And even more dead is the social meeting ground for screaming twilight fans, dressed up wizards standing in line for hours in anticipation for the midnight release of the next Harry Potter Book, book clubs, and intellectuals discussing the world’s ills over a slice of lemon bread and a cup of coffee.
As I give this eulogy I struggle to imagine where the Professor, the Garden gnome, the Manga Priest, Republican Santa Claus, Anime Geeks, Vampires, and Wizards will all live.
On the day that Borders died, the world became that much more two dimensional.
