This strip did indeeed remind me of my bead obsession when I was in elementary school. me and my cousin ran a craft store in my grandparents basement. I made some jewelry, so I had a tub of beads... once my cousin wanted to take some of my beads for her own section of the store and we got in a tug of war over the tub till the beads poured out.
I reminded my mom about this and she said, "oh yes, you hoard things! never sharing.. tsk tsk. of course, beads are like money, so I guess I understand."
I was thinking, wtf... bartering? I can trade a pile of beads for a cd or something?
I only semi-remember actually being in a bead store though [it was in Galveston and the beads were expensive :( ]. Michael's was my place of choice.. beads came in little baggies... I'd buy a few different sorts of those to mix it up.
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Anyway, I do know the feeling of the boring store... usually for me this included places like the golf store. in fact, they should make it where SOs didn't have to go into the boring stores... boring stores of differing degrees should be put next to each other, so a couple can separate and join up once done looking at their equally boring things :D