Odds-and-ends shop, "queer" sized clothes and weird instruments

Stopped into a store that carried all kinds of odds and ends.. There were clothes, crafted jewelry, lip balms, etc. After a while in the store I realized there was also a section with musical instruments. Most of the items were second hand, especially the musical instrument section. There were signs near the door stating that they carried "queer" sizes for some of their clothing, with certain larger dimensions. The only clothes I noticed with that designation were some shoddy looking sweaters.

I wandered the store for a while, ducked out, realized I had nothing better to do (plus I think my curiosity was piqued by the sign about "queer" sizes), and came back in. The guy and girl at the front desk (free spirit artsy types, probably in their twenties or thirties) cheered when they saw me again, as if I had been their best customer of all time, despite that I had never bought anything. I guess they were glad to see a familiar face from 30 seconds ago.

After some more poking, I finally caught sight of the musical instruments. Most of them were guitarish, with a few bowed instruments interspersed. There were one or two other people poking around the area too. The first "guitar" I picked up was more like a bass guitar (left-handed), dull brown colored, but the strings were really odd. The largest string looked like it was made of bamboo, around a centimeter thick at its widest point, and tapering to perhaps half of that towards one end. Plucking it produced no real respectable sound. The next string was much thinner, more like a typical bass guitar string's width, and I couldn't tell what material it was. It sounded a bit higher, but without much of a sustained note. There were three more strings, all a little thinner than the second, but identical to each other in thickness and pitch. And all equally dull. As I put that instrument back down on the chair where I had picked it up (balanced precariously against the curved, arched back of the wooden chair), I noticed a sign that said to be "conservative" in touching the instruments.

So I looked at, but didn't touch, a bunch of other guitarish instruments. Finally, one of the women who worked there came out of nowhere and handed me a Les Paul, hoping I would play a little. It was totally out of tune, so I tuned it up by ear (twice, because the changes in string tension on the first run knocked the lower strings back out of tune; people commented on this as they looked on). I was particularly taciturn this whole time, mumbling something or other when I had the guitar tuned. A mild crowd was starting to gather.

Just as I was waking up, I had decided I would play Tombstones, by Dave Klinger.