I did not intend to make one last trek to Borders, though I've been following the news the last several weeks and was saddened but not surprised that many of its stores would be closing. What need have I for Borders? I am always up to my ears in reading for grad school; I have a million books at home I haven't read yet; I have a local, independent bookstore that I love; I have Amazon for deals; I have a Kindle. Why visit Borders yet again, even for 10-40% off every item in the store? Borders is redundant.
As I drove to Target tonight for a two-year-old's birthday gift, though, I passed the Borders sign and wondered. Bargain-priced gifts, not just another Mattel toy from a big box store, danced in my head. I turned in at the next entrance and selected a Melissa and Doug wooden dress-up doll for 20% off.
That should have been it. I could have cruised to the checkout and left. But instead, as I too-carefully selected a 40%-off birthday card, I was entranced by any number of lovely, tempting items. A box the shape of the Eiffel tower. Bookends that look like globes and suspension bridges. Elaborate, felt-and-sequin bedecked cards that retail for $10 apiece. A hardcover copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with a fetching green dust jacket. Chocolates. Board games. Word games. A "Hop on Pop" floor puzzle.
It's no coincidence that very few of these items are books. That was the error in my logic. Borders isn't my favorite brick-and-mortar chain bookstore over Barnes and Noble for no reason. If it were completely redundant, I would have no reason to prefer it or have an opinion at all. But it's the tremendous amount of slightly nerdy, overpriced crap that draws me in. I have no need for anything I listed above, or anything else in the store, quite honestly. But I very nearly went right back in after I'd paid (for the Melissa and Doug doll, three cards, and a tube of Burt's Bees hand lotion) because on the way out the door, I was momentarily shanghaied. There's something heady about the idea that only $19.99 stands between you and The Complete Yoga Kit, or between you and copy of The Complete History of the World with a cover 18 inches high.
I think it's the completeness of the crap that beckons me. As my professor said tonight at grad class, "Everything contains its opposite." If I am drawn to The Complete Whatever, it's because it suggests to me that I am incomplete. I am not a yoga master. I do not know everything about the history of the world. That these things, and more, become possible as you wander every overpopulated nook and cranny of a Borders store, I think, is the draw. Books are beside the point.