Buster, Misfiled

Shorts all this week. Many thousands of for-pay words to write, on tight deadlines and of course they get bumped up to the front of the queue here at the word mill.

But I will say that I was in a big box electronic store over the weekend, one that also happens to have long aisles of DVDs for sale. Just as I spied a Buster Keaton box set sitting square under a sign that said DRAMA, a young clerk asked if I need help with anything.

“Well, Buster Keaton should be under comedy,” I said. That should be COMEDY, which was an aisle over. He didn’t respond for a long moment. “You know, Buster Keaton was a comedian.”

I suspect he didn’t know, but I can’t hold that against him. Decades pass. A lot of things get lost or at least dimmed. The fact that Buster Keaton has a box set means he’s survived to some degree, but this lad’s cinema experience might not have included him. At his age I may or may not have known much about him, either. “But it’s a box set,” he answered incongruously.

“Just thought I’d let you know,” I said, and that was that.