Thrift Store Adventures: Future Rapist Kid, Plus Other Stuff!

Looking at and interacting with other thrift store patrons is one of the merits of thrift store shopping, as I've mentioned several times. Most of the time, the funny/creepy/trashy ones are shoppers, but this weekend I had an interesting run-in with someone who works at the thrift store.

I went to Kansas over the weekend to see some friends and they mentioned that there is a great thrift store that I need to check out, so we went. They weren't kidding - this place was glorious. All the stuff was awesome but it still smelled and looked like an old lady died there and her cats took over. There was even blood splatters on the restroom door. It's exactly what I look for in a thrift store.

Anyway, there was a little kid working/volunteering at the store, presumably with his mom. He couldn't have been older than 10 years old. So I was checking out this strange picture of a woman breastfeeding, which had been inexplicably placed in the women's clothing section, when the kid walked up to a mannequin I was standing near. He said, "Oh crap, I forgot to make this one look like a rape victim." He then pulled the mannequin's shirt off its shoulder exposing the supple, plastic breast underneath. I then looked around and noticed that there were several mannequins, all of which he had turned into rape victims.

Those poor girls never had a chance.

So that was weird.

Anyway, I found some pretty good stuff at the store. Mostly books. So let's go over a few, shall we?? First up, we have a book called Who Am I? by Lindley Boyer, copyrighted in 1965.

What grabbed my eye about this book is that the title on the spine was in the opposite direction as most books. I opened it up and saw on one of the first pages, "To Hazel, who has taught more babies to read than anybody." What the hell does that mean? When I flipped through, though, I knew I had to have it. I mean, look at this: 

Seems obvious

There are 110 pages of this. There are like 50 words total and it has some of the most awful illustrations you've ever seen. If that's all it takes to get your "work" into books, I am clearly in the wrong profession. It wasn't until I brought the book home that I turned to the very first page and noticed something interesting about the note in the front...

If, for some reason, you can't read the picture, please learn cursive. But it says,

"To Todd - Whose graduation from college I hope to attend.

-Lindley Boyer
Oct. 1965
Chestnut Hill"

It was signed by the author! What a great day in thrift store history! I'm guessing Todd just wasn't that impressed with this gift so he donated it to a thrift store. I don't really blame him. I did a brief Google search on this book but can't really seem to find any information, other than the fact that Chestnut Hill is a college in Pennsylvania. Anyway, I was pretty stoked to find this :)

Next, we have this awesome coloring book from 1969, Zoo Coloring Book.

I love this book for a few reasons: 1) it is pretty old. 42 is pretty ancient for a coloring book, I'd say. 2) None of the pages have been colored or marked, leaving it in pretty decent condition. 3) The pictures in this thing are fucking ridiculous. I really wish I could just post ALL the pictures, but I will spare you guys that and just show my favorite pictures. The artist(s) seemed to have adopted an "eh, good enough" attitude. Check these out:

"Hey, sugarbuns, have a seat here on my long, hard branch ;)"

This koala has the roundest, blankest eyes I've ever seen. But his right eyebrow is raised so it makes me think he just got a sudden whiff of what the vervet monkey up there was laying down. 

... If I ever saw a cheetah that looked like that I would wonder who put magic mushrooms in my sandwich.

These artists have obviously never seen a fox in their lives. 

Yep. That's exactly what I think of whenever I imagine a bison. Hit the nail right on the head on that one.

Looks like they gave the employee with M.S. a shot at drawing a seal. 

Okay, that's all I have in me tonight. I have more fun stuff to go over, but I want to go to bed, so until next time, friends. Sleep tight, don't let the elephant seals bite. Or rapist little kids...