There are 6.5 billion people in the world. They come in different colors. They come in different shapes. They have different personalities. They have different opinions about themselves and each other. While we agree on a lot of things, there are still thousands of ways to divide us.

One such way is people who pay attention, and people who don’t. That could have a lot of meanings, like who’s a good listener or who reads the newspaper. I like people who pay attention to the other things, those that nobody else notices or finds interesting.

I was walking in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago with a friend. It was one of those December days where it’s sunny enough to look warm, but just chilly enough to remind you that it’s winter. There were plenty of other people around, businessmen on their lunch break and tourists heading to the White House. As we crossed a street, she pointed out a fire hydrant with a hat.

Undoubtedly, hundreds of people walked by that fire hydrant with a bright orange road cone on top, but how many of them really noticed it? How many of them found a second to laugh at a fire hydrant with a hat? Then there was the possibility that the cone wasn’t a hat, it was a cone that just wanted to make itself feel superior to another nearby cone. You see, the “hat” cone was plain, an orange cone that had been put through a lot and showed its age. The cone next to the fire hydrant was a bright orange, topped with two reflective stripes screamed of a higher status in the cone world. But on that day, it was the old, beaten cone that was best on its hydrant perch.

But maybe asking for people who notice the extra stuff in life is asking a bit much. After all, so many of them are struggling with the obvious.

Take the all-too-often occurrence at the New Balance store in Tysons Corner, Va. This is a store that sells nothing but New Balance products, has nothing but New Balance products and is adorned with an overwhelming number of items possessing the New Balance name. And no, for the thousandth time, they don’t have Reeboks, Asics, or Heelys.

An actual conversation:

Lady: “What brand is this?”
Me: “New Balance, it’s all New Balance.”
Lady: “Oh, is that some kind of new thing, like from Nike or something?”
Me: Bangs head on wall.

At least while I’m there I can notice that very few of our customers write left-handed. All-knowing Wikipedia says 8 to 15 percent of adults are lefties…though it also actually states that a long-term impairment to the right hand is a cause for some people to write with their left hand. I never would have thought of that. Ever.

One thing we lefties apparently have is atrocious handwriting. That’s not everyone—there are certainly some who manage to overcome the institutional barriers to proper penmanship—but many of us struggle to make things legible enough for anyone but ourselves to read. Sometimes even that is tough.

In English we write from left to write. For right-handers, there’s really not much in their way. They can pull the pen across the paper, seeing clearly what they are doing and have no physical impediments to their task.

For lefties, there’s a lot in the way. We have to push the pen, much harder than pulling it across the page. When we’re looking at what we’re doing, we have to sort of hook our hand above the letters as we go or our fingers will get in the way. Try writing sometime without being able to see what you’re doing. Then there’s the smudging. As we move across the page, our hand is moving through what we just wrote. Fountain pens? Forget it. Markers? Not pretty. And then there’s spiral notebooks. As we write on the left side of a page, our hand rests on the stabbing metal coils—not exactly a recipe for success.

But remember, everyone is born right handed. Only the gifted overcome it.

Laziness is all around us. It takes many forms, from people who spend most of the day on the couch to those who put things off to another day instead of putting out the effort right now.

Procrastination is fine, as long as it’s not a way of life and as long as those things eventually get done. Physical laziness, like complaining when an escalator is broken so you have to actually walk up the stairs, is not acceptable.

I answer several phone calls a day asking where our store is located in the mall. Apparently these people have never been to a mall and don’t understand the basic concept. Here it is: Many stores under one roof. It’s a shopping center, not a city.

I want to tell every one of those callers that it’s a mall, there are stores inside and all they have to do is find someplace to park and walk inside. There are thousands of parking spaces, all located within short walking distance of a door that will get you inside the “massive” complex that is the mall.

From there, you are inside, use those two things at the lower half of you body and move them in succession. This is called walking. You can walk at whatever pace you want, from a near crawl to a jog if you wish. Just move those two little guys.

Once this process is started, use the thing on the top of your head. It has many functions, the most useful here being the ability (maybe) to read, and also the swivel function that allows the user to move the range of vision from one place to another. Use these functions to read the store names as you pass. When you see “New Balance,” slow your walking pace (see above) and move the body in the direction of the sign. There is a nice wide door right underneath the sign that allows you entrance into the store.

When your business is complete, simply do the reverse of everything you did getting into the store in order to get home. Note: Please leave out calling us again at the end of this process in order to not waste more of my time.

If this process seems to arduous, then perhaps you should reevaluate your original mission. You do not need athletic shoes. I repeat, you do not need athletic shoes. Go to CVS and stock up on AAA batteries for your remote control. And no, I can’t tell you how to get to a CVS or give you directions to the batteries once you are in the store.

That all may sound harsh, but believe me, it happens all too often for any sort of patience to remain.

Take another example. “Hi is there a Skechers store in your mall.” Yes. “Can you give me their phone number?”

Yes that happened. Someone went through the effort of finding the number to one store in the mall, in order to ask the number of another store in the mall. Sounds like it should have been an easy one-step process of simply finding the number of the store you actually wanted in the first place. Maybe not.

At roughly 7 p.m. Saturday two women came into the store with no shopping bags. One tried on several pairs of shoes. She said she was so tired she couldn’t tie them herself. I asked if they had been shopping all day. No, they just got there. They hadn’t done anything really all day, “Actually I don’t really know why I’m tired, haha.” Don’t worry, I’ve only been on my feet for seven hours–with 3 to go–I’ll take care of the incredibly taxing task of tying your shoes.

On second thought, let me go find a three-year-old kid to follow you home just in case you need them tied again.

First: had my last stint of being an anchor this week. (April 6). Not too bad of a show, and I got to experience my first riot AND do a story from the White House.

And now the goods…
Ok, so if you know me, you know that I have a little knowledge about shoes. Well, make that more than is practically necessary for a human being to function in everyday life. So when a customer begins to question whether I know what I’m doing, I get slightly peeved at that and wish I could go Jack Bauer on them and chokeslam them into the floor, followed by pressing a gun to their head and demanding to know where the nerve gas is….or something like that…

So on Saturday I’m helping this one woman with shoes. I’m in the middle of a conversation with her when an older gentleman walks up and just starts talking to me. He says he has “the New Balance, umm, 700 something” and wants a new pair. Normally, this is not a hard situation. A few questions from me and I can figure out which one of the 10 different “700 something” models they might have, and thus what has replaced it. (Since most often these are older people who keep the same shoes for 10 years and don’t understand that they change every year).

I ask him ONE question, the natural first one of “do you know what kind of shoe it is?” There are only so many answers to this question, and the answer is the easiest way to help him get what he wants–remember, he came into the store looking for help.

Not only does he refuse to answer my question, he immediately asks if I’m familiar with the numbers of the shoes. I can’t finish my reply to his question before he asks where the manager is. Knowing that he doesn’t like to listen to my responses, I simply point to the manager, who was sitting on the floor on the other side of the store helping a customer. The man looks at her, looks back at me, then walks out of the store.

Once I finish grad school and have some free time, I’m totally writing a book about my experience selling shoes. Too. Freaking. Bizarre.

Sometimes when you least expect it, you hear something that is both surprising and equally disturbing, but was meant in the best way. Like today when I was selling this woman a pair of shoes. She was a little older and had trouble leaning down to tie them. So I offered to take care of that for her and was just about done with the second shoe when her equally old and non-agile-looking husband says “Damn boy, you got some skinny arms but they strong as hell.”

Now I always thought I’d hear a comment like that in prison, or when being propositioned on a street corner somewhere, not when trying to sell a shoe. And of course the conversation didn’t end with that comment. It was followed by “Do you lift weights?,” my swift denial and desire to move a few feet away–Only those with tickets get to enjoy the gun show, and this man did not have the appropriate pass for admission.

At work yesterday there were an inordinate number of items left in the store by customers. These are people who for some reason or another take an item out of a pocket, a purse, or just set down something they had been holding, then upon deciding they’ve had enough of New Balance for the day simply walk out without them.

Now I am usually one of these forgetful people with items like that, which is why I tend to keep things like my cell phone in my pocket at all times and never just carry it around–it would be gone in about 3 seconds. So I can understand how it happens…well not quite.

One of the items was a cell phone, and thankfully the guy was not walking that fast and I was able to catch up to him and return the phone without too much effort on my part. Another customer left his Mastercard, which almost got used to order pizza…well maybe not, I’m not a terrible person. The last, and easily the most humorous was a man who left his cane. Now I shouldn’t laugh at that, at all, but if you walked into a store using a cane, sat down on a bench, and got up, wouldn’t you probably reach for that cane when you were going to walk out? I certainly would. This man, who obviously needed said cane, made it all the way out of the store and a few steps down the hall before a fellow employee grabbed the cane and chased the swift senior citizen down the hall.

So the lesson for today: Check for credit card, cell phone and cane when leaving a store.

And I apologize for no links today…I’m feeling a bit lazy…

I have once again experienced the greatest birth control known to man, one that is completely free and for anyone in their right mind should be 100 percent effective. It’s called, other people’s kids.

After watching for years as parents tried to fit their kids for shoes, and those kids did everything possible to thwart such a simple operation, and then today babysitting high school kids at journalism camp, there is no doubt in my mind that children are pure evil put on the earth to drive older beings insane.

They serve no other purpose, and if it wouldn’t mean the end of mankind I would suggest they be stricken from the earth.