A guy walks into the store. Black tee-shirt bearing a logo, trucker hat, mid-twenties, average height and build. He walks maybe ten feet into the store, stops, looks at the display fixture there. I greet him, ask him if he’s looking for something.<\/p>\n
“I wanted something with pictures of angels and demons fighting.”<\/p>\n
We sell video games. Artwork isn’t our specialty. “Can you be more specific?” I ask. Something he might say could spark a thought, point me in the direction of a game along those lines.<\/p>\n
“I want a picture of heaven, and a picture of hell, and a picture of heaven and hell at war.” He runs his hand up and down his other arm. “I want a tattoo of that.”<\/p>\n
A tattoo. He just wants artwork. Not our bag. I shake my head. I’m really drawing a blank.<\/p>\n
There’s a Christian bookstore at the end of the building. They don’t carry the Buddy Jesus, so I somehow doubt they would have pictures of angels and demons fighting. I said as much.<\/p>\n
He nods, disappointed.<\/p>\n
I snap my fingers. Brainwave!<\/p>\n
“All you need is artwork, right? Do an Internet search. Paradise Lost<\/i>. You’re bound to find exactly what you’re looking for.”<\/p>\n
His eyes brighten. “Paradise Lost<\/i>,” he repeats, trying to fix the name in his memories. “What’s that?”<\/p>\n
I blink. I count to three. I blink again.<\/p>\n
“Paradise Lost<\/i>. Epic poem. John Milton. About a war between heaven and hell.” I pull out some paper, write down the title. “‘Tis nobler to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” I say, surely mangling the quote.<\/p>\n
He leaves, happy.<\/p>\n
What are they teaching in schools these days? I had to read Paradise Lost<\/i> in high school, and I wouldn’t consider Barbour County, West Virginia to be at the bleeding edge.<\/p>\n
Paradise Lost<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A guy walks into the store. Black tee-shirt bearing a logo, trucker hat, mid-twenties, average height and build. He walks maybe ten feet into the store, stops, looks at the display fixture there. I greet him, ask him if he’s looking for something. “I wanted something with pictures of angels and demons fighting.” We sellContinue reading “On a Customer's Strange Request”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[228,942,4124],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-work","tag-eb-games","tag-paradise-lost","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}