Early Morning Bookstore

     It's one of the best times to work in a bookstore. Early morning. It's not the same forced wakefulness, gotta be up to get money, kind of early morning either. You are alert, you are happy, and you are ready for anything the day is going to throw at you. You feel invigorated at the idea of all the new books you are going to find in your own store, and a smile lingers on your face. I feel like shouting "Bring it on book-lovers! I will recommend so many books today! Not to mention all the amazing displays going up later on!" (Of course I won't actually yell this, as yelling has adverse effects on quiet.)
     And it is very quiet. You look around the bookstore and no one is here yet, all the shelves are neatly stacked and ready to be mangled by hordes of bibliophiles. The only thing that breaks the silence is that odd humming light (which you learn to drown out) and the occasional vehicle driving by. And quieter than both of those is the voices.
     Not in a creepy way "voices". If you work in a bookstore long enough, you learn that there are voices in each and every hardback, paperback, pop-up, and board book. They chat with each other in the morning too, as they wake up, ready to be bought and start their lives as endless entertainment. You learn to love it, I know I do. It is calming. And it is what makes a bookstore so amazing, if you can hear the voices, that is. So yea, I guess that sounds kinda creepy (and it can be at night) but not as creepy as the ghost who lives here.  (And there is a ghost. That's a subject for another post).
     So bookstores in the morning. Everything is clean, it's warm, it's quiet, tidy, and mellow. You know in a few hours it's going to be so busy that it would be a miracle if the store was ever empty again. You know that there will be books to put away and messes to clean up. Shelves to polish and sections to alphabetize. But it is worth every second of multiplex chaos for the few minutes of  quiet contentment with the voices of the books and the ghost that haunts upstairs.