So I was in Eagle, Colorado for a few days, and a woman inside an alpaca store (yes, you read that correctly) asked if I’d been to the Nearly Everything Store.
No, I had not.
“Well, you need to go.”
I went.
The Nearly Everything Store—in the heart of the town’s lovely-but-small downtown—didn’t have nearly everything. Or even close to everything. Or even 1/1,000,000,000,000th of everything. It had candy and medicine and T-shirts and candles and greeting cards. It had hats and hunting gear and pencils and erasers. It had cough drops and glue and shoelaces.
Among the things it didn’t have:
Lionel Manuel’s spleen.
The remains of my great aunt.
Dog food.
Snakes.
DVDs of “All Dogs Go to Heaven.”
The arm hair of the guy sitting near me in the airport.
Any item with the number 543,664112 printed across the front.
A Steve Trout Chicago White Sox baseball card.
A Steve Trout Chicago Cubs baseball card.
A Steve Trout New York Yankees baseball card.
A Steve Trout Seattle Mariners baseball card.
My oven.
A mask depicting Gerald Ford.
Three drops of infected blood.
The autobiography of Elizabeth Holmes.
Authentic Graceland carpet.
The smell of french fries.
Slave pigeons.
Elbow grease.
Alf-themed Frisbees.
But, again, they did have candy.
