“Well, I guess girly-girls would get grossed out,” Malyszko said. “But we pride ourselves on being kind of guys anyway.”
And how long are you guys willing to wait in line?
“As long as it takes,” said Fortunato. “It’s worthy of missing the first half hour of the Red Sox game.” They ended up being there for about three hours.
Outside the store, I stopped Dennis Dobbins, 18, with a mopsy flop of hair, Briana Rossi, 18, a business student at Mass College of Liberal Arts, and Jaime Wolcott, 17, a Rockland High School student just along for the ride. Did they chat with Chuck at all?
“I was at a loss for words” said Dobbins.
“I asked him how to pronounce his name,” said Rossi.
Great! How do you do it?
“PAUL-a-nook.”
“Like Paul in a nook,” Wolcott explained.
Rossi and Dobbins looked to see what he’d written in their books.
To Rossi, in a sweeping hand, “Happy Hauntings.” And to Dobbins, “To Dennis, my favorite bunny.” Both girls wore the ears. Are they in reference to something in one of his books? Not that they knew of.
“It’s just because he’s strange,” said Wolcott.
And what do you make of the crowd, I asked Mark Mitchell, a lean, tan 25 year-old. “It’s sort of like his books,” he said. “Edgy exterior, inside warm and fuzzy.”
Warm and fuzzy? Like the bunny ears?
“The books are jarring on the surface. Inside you find a piece of chocolate.”
