By Heidi Kurpiela

Can you shop on campus? I mean really shop…
If you wanted to pick up a gift for a friend’s birthday, could you find something unique on campus? How about if you needed a new toothbrush?

Better yet, what if a screw was loose on your bookshelf, the strap was ripped off your book bag, and your computer keyboard was caked with dust? Could you run down to Barnes and Noble’s campus bookstore and buy a toothbrush, screwdriver, a sewing kit and a compressed-gas duster?

Sure you could, unless compressed-gas dusters were sold out that day.

Thoughtful, thoughtless & handy at the campus bookstore

Girls love cute journals even if they never write in them. The bookstore has this really adorable one with paper flower petals glued to it for $14.98. Some girls are junkies for lip balm or any variation thereof. If you’re looking for some good quality ointments, then try buying that tingly Burt’s Bees stuff that comes in travel size kits.

“I like the lemon cuticle cream,” says shopper Pam Renaldo. “No more hangnails!”

Guys love their computers and sometimes they lose sight of its cleanliness between games of Unreal Tournament. Try “Dust-Off” for $7.79 (it blasts dust from between the keys on your keyboard.)

“That’s a good idea,” says Dan Schmitt, a computer information systems major. “I always use the end of a paperclip to clean out between my keys.”

If that idea seems tactless, then you could always fall back on the Buffalo State baseball cap for $17.98. And if that idea seems too expensive then go for the White-Out pen ($3.48) since we all mistakes

Babies need bibs and the campus bookstore sells them embroidered with the BSC logo for $9.98, as well as infant-sized pajamas for $17.98.

Students, as we all know, have special needs. For example, we get pounding headaches in the middle of a lecture. For that, the bookstore sells two tablets of Bayer aspirin, drinking cup included, for 99 cents.

“I was in bio class the other day and my head hurt so bad I’d have paid anything for an aspirin,” says Buffalo State sophomore Holly Catalano. “I had no idea the bookstore even sold aspirins, much less with a drinking cup!”

Other cheap practical buys include:

• Maximum Strength No-Doz ($3.89)
• Tiny sewing kit ($1.29)
• Trojan condom (69 cents)
• Socks (currently half-off for $2.50)
• Screw driver ($2.78)
• Birthday candles ($.49)