From time to time I think about two customers from my long-ago EB Games days.<\/p>\n
There was a man named Malcolm who came in the store on the weekends with his son, aged around 10. (I cannot remember the son’s name, but it might’ve been David. That’s what I’ll use going forward, but it might not be right.) They never bought anything, David would look around the store, and they would leave.<\/p>\n
One day, David had a question, but Malcolm shut him down. “Don’t bother him, David. He’s busy.” And I probably was busy doing something, but a boy had a question. I set aside whatever I was doing, said I wanted to hear it, listened to the question, which may have been about the ship date of a game, and answered it with great seriousness. Malcolm said to me he didn’t want them to be a bother, and I said that it was no bother at all; that’s what I was there for. Even though they never bought anything and I had a sense that they had little money, I treated David like he was every bit as important and worthy of my time as the guy coming in to drop 600 dollars on a PlayStation 2, games, and accessories. Not because that’s what you do in retail, but because that’s just how I am.<\/p>\n
David was shy, and his voice was always quiet. He wasn’t very tall, and he had black and curly hair. He often seemed a bit glum, and he would often smile after I answered his questions, not so much because he now knew something but because he was seen.<\/p>\n
Malcolm was a thin, physically broken man. In my memories, when I was in my twenties, I felt like he was about sixty. He felt aged. His voice was thin and rough, and there was a frailty to him. He looked, as I said, broken.<\/p>\n
One time they visited, Malcolm thanked me for treating David well. One afternoon, in the middle of the week, he called me at the store. He didn’t have questions about product. He wasn’t looking to buy something. But he wanted something. He wanted a human connection. He wanted to talk.<\/p>\n
He told me about his life. How he’d been an engineer for IBM. How it had broken his health. How he’d married a woman and they had a son and they got divorced and she got everything and he lived in a small apartment. How she spoiled David and he didn’t have anything for his son. How David had video games at his mother’s place (I seem to recall that she had remarried), and nothing at Malcolm’s apartment. How he had David on the weekends and they came to the mall because it was something for them to do together, even though he didn’t feel that David liked him much or they were connecting. He was dying, and he didn’t expect to live much longer, a year or two. He talked about his love for his son, and he knew that his ex-wife would eventually poison David’s mind against him after he was gone. There was sadness and regret in Malcolm’s words, and I understood why he’d thanked me that one day for treating David so well, because these visits to my store were happy moments for David and for Malcolm. He didn’t have a lot, but he had that. He needed someone to talk to. He needed to feel like he mattered.<\/p>\n
After that, Malcolm would call me a few times a month. He understood that I was busy, that I had a store to run, and if I told him I needed to go he understood.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2002, EB transferred me to North Carolina. Frankly, I needed the change of scenery; the store I managed was a high-prestige store in the company, and I was burning out, but the company had invested in me (they put me through a special management program) and they found me a better situation. (And it was a very good situation for me, until GameStop bought EB Games and I saw my career plans vanish.)<\/p>\n
I broke the news to Malcolm in one of his phone calls. He and David hadn’t been in for several weeks, and I hadn’t heard from him in some time, either. His health hadn’t been good. He’d been sick. He was upset at the news. He accepted and understood, but it upset him.<\/p>\n
Malcolm and David came and visited on my last Saturday before my transfer. I shook Malcolm’s hand. David gave me a hug. It was sad, that last day was sad. “Do not fear to weep, for not all tears are evil.”<\/p>\n
David would be in his mid-thirties now. I hope he’s well, and I hope he knows his father really and truly did love him. I hope Malcolm found a bit of peace before his end. I don’t know what happened to them — Google searches on the little bit I remember have proven completely fruitless over the years — and maybe I don’t want to know, because whatever happened, good or bad, they’re still in my head as a little quiet boy and a sad father who loved him.<\/p>\n
Merry Christmas, David.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From time to time I think about two customers from my long-ago EB Games days. There was a man named Malcolm who came in the store on the weekends with his son, aged around 10. (I cannot remember the son’s name, but it might’ve been David. That’s what I’ll use going forward, but it mightContinue reading “Memories of Long Ago”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[5237,5346,3921],"class_list":["post-34937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-work","tag-eb-games-2","tag-exton","tag-pennsylvania","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}