I went to Menard’s last night to buy some sandpaper. All I wanted was some sandpaper so I could sand down a slab of plywood I wanted to use for a desk top so I could apply a second coat of shellac to it. Menard’s had all kinds of sandpaper, as long as I wanted it cut specially for a wide range of sanders, but I couldn’t find a single sheet of regular old sandpaper, no matter how far I walked away from the sanders. There just was no sandpaper. I thought maybe it might be somewhere else, the way that good old-fashioned non-power tools have their own section that’s far away from the cool tools. I found lots of regular saws and screwdrivers that ran on plain old elbow grease, but no big, square pieces of sandpaper you could stick to a block of wood. Finally, I broke down and asked a clerk I found taking inventory in an aisle. He ran off in a a very definite direction, working his feet like he had a destination in mind, and I followed him expecting big things, but we ended up at a computer station where he punched the word “sandpaper” into a google search, then led me right back to the section of power tools I had just been visiting. There is no sandpaper at Menard’s. How screwed up is that?