'I Think I Can Manage' is a weekly column by retailer Steven Bates, manager of Bookery Fantasy, a million dollar retail operation in Fairborn, Ohio.  This week's column is on retailing memories.
 
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the weekly trips I made to the grocery store with my mother.  The Royal Blue was a typical small-town supermarket, housed in an old building adjacent to New Concord's five & dime variety store, the Co-Op.  While Mom shopped, I browsed the Co-Op's spinner rack, looking for anything new and in my budget.  Back then, when comic books were less than 20 cents, I could buy five with my $1.00 allowance, but only if I bought them one at a time to avoid tax (when the price went to a quarter a book, I had to renegotiate my weekly 'pay' to cover the government's share).  Some weeks, the shopping for comics took longer than groceries, and I was rushed to pick the perfect assortment.  Though I was partial to super-heroes, I read a bit of everything, from Archie to Sgt. Rock to Turok.  Anything was fair game, even romance comics, but they were a last resort, and none of my friends could ever know that I bought them.

 

On a good week, I'd buy my books and walk next door to the Royal Blue, where my brother was a clerk (and later manager).  I'd sit in the large, open front cart the bag boy used to carry out groceries, reading my haul.  I was a bit of a fixture, hanging out with my brother Randy, and everyone in New Concord knew I was a comic book collector.  While other kids were buying candy, or toys, or soda pop (in returnable bottles!), every dime I earned from chores or from collecting pop bottles or was given out of the kindness of my parents' hearts went to comic books.  It surprises no one from my old hometown when they hear that I run a comic book shop.  They usually smile, nodding, and say something like 'That's a perfect job for him.'

 

As I got older, I spent less time at the Royal Blue and the Co-Op, but I never lost my habit.  My dad started bringing me home DC's Tarzan of the Apes once a month, picked up at a newsstand on the way home from work.  These were stripped of their covers, probably credited as returns and meant to be destroyed, but I didn't care.  Joe Kubert's interpretation was, and remains for me, the definitive Tarzan.  And every time I read one of those old back issues, I remember my dad, a real double-whammy of 'feel good' nostalgia.

 

Are we creating those kinds of memories for kids today?  Is it even possible to do so?  Experts say and studies show and popular opinion states that the youth of today are too distracted by video games, the Internet, sex, drugs, and rap music (hip-hop having overtaken rock-n-roll as the 'spawn of Satan' for the time being) to care about comics.  If it doesn't move, isn't loud, and can't make them feel euphoric, it's not part of their meager existence.  At least, that's what they tell me.

 

I'm not so sure.  I've had some pretty great kids coming in to my shop over the years.  As an over-grown child myself, I've always tried to relate to these miniature consumers, and I think I've been pretty successful at making them feel welcome in the Bookery.  Treating them with respect and showing genuine interest in their lives, not just their allowance (which, by the way, is substantially more than a buck these days), I'd like to think I've made a few friends as well.  Like Bob, the little heavy metal head-banger into ultra-violent comics, who now comes in with his wife and baby daughter and sings in a Christian rock band; Brian and Bryan, best friend aspiring artists, who now work as professional illustrators and animators; Frank and Rob, trench coat-wearing anti-socialites, who both grew up to be bright and funny citizens; or Andy, the shy kid who couldn't look you in the eye that now leads his platoon into combat situations without blinking.  There are dozens more, but the names are not important so much as the experiences.  Each of these kids came into the Bookery a long time ago looking for something--a comic book, trading cards, a game.  But what they got was a lot more-they found a refuge from the real world, from the mundane, from the grown-ups and peers and society that didn't quite 'get them'--the same thing I found on that spinner rack and in that grocery cart nearly forty years ago.

 

Some critics would say there aren't a lot of comic books aimed at younger readers, and I'd be the first to agree with them.  But kids today are a lot more sophisticated, or, at the very least, a lot more experienced, than we were, and there's bound to be something that appeals to them, given a chance to try it.  Let your shop be their introduction to the coolness of comics or the glories of gaming.  Make a few friends, change a few lives, be a window to a whole other world.  You won't just be selling stuff.  You'll be making memories.