I'm stuck at the liberry on a Sunday, it's
snowing again and there are potential perverts wandering through our
doors.
The
weather will NOT make up its mind. Sure, it's cold, but it's not yet
cold enough for anything to stick. It's also not snowing enough to keep
people from venturing out. I'd expected to see less than 10 patrons the
whole day, but it's actually been fairly busy for a Sunday. Granted, I
don't normally work Sundays, as that's Miss E's job, but she's out of
town so I'm doing the fill-in thing.
There's a fat
hairy guy who keeps walking through the library. I don't know what his
deal is. When he first came in, he asked if we had a periodicals section
and I told him it was at the top of the stairs and up he went. I didn't
see him leave, though, so it was something of a surprise when I saw him
walking up the hill outside a half hour later. He came in and went back
upstairs. Then he left a few minutes later. Then he came back an hour
or so later. Then he left almost immediately. Then he came back. Then he
left again for good. Don't know what's going on, but he doesn't seem to
be interested in reading periodicals.
Hmm. Maybe Chester's
sending him in to test and see if we follow other patrons up the stairs
when we know they're headed for the periodicals and not just him.
Shortly
after the fat guy came in for the second time, I was headed back to
log-off a computer and caught the smell of incense in the reference
room. It smelled exactly like burning incense, but there was no smoke
that I could see. It seemed to definitely be concentrated in the
reference room, though. I went upstairs and could smell it faintly
there, but it may have just wafted up the staircase. I asked the three
people in the reference room if they could smell it too, but they said
they couldn't. Maybe the smell is being created by the paint-chip
ghost....
See, we think we have a ghost. It's the only
way we can yet explain the paint chips that have been appearing on the
landing of our staircase for the past several days. We clean them up and
then they return. And the odd thing is, there is no chipping white
paint to be found anywhere in the vicinity of the stairwell. I don't
actually believe it's a ghost, mind you, though you might expect to find
one in our library. After all, the building once served as a field
hospital in a nearby battle during the Civil War. We have Civil War era
graffiti drawn onto one glassed off section of our main-room wall to
prove it. So believe me, I've been on the lookout for ghosts. Haven't
found any yet.
Our last
sicko of the day is a recent addition to the collection of potential
perverts who come in the library. I call him The Parka, as that's what
he wears: a great big puffy white parka that it's not near cold enough
outside to justify. He's either passing through the area or is just new
to the library because he's terribly green as to how we do things and to
our hours. Just about every day this week, though, he has come in and
said "I need to use a computer" in a slightly louder than necessary
voice before he's even reached the desk. I'm not entirely sure, but I
think he's using the computer to sign in to some kind of on-line dating
service. At first I thought he was just cruising for porn, as I would
occasionally see thumbnailed faces of blonde model-types on the screen
when passing through the reference room. I even heard him grunting in
what sounded like frustration a few times. I chalked this up to his
inability to see anything better than faces due to our Porn-Filter. (We
installed the porn filters last year to comply with state regulations.
When people try to visit porn sites, a message screen pops up saying
they can't access that site unless a library employee turns off the
filter first. The screen invites them to see us at the desk if they
would like us to turn the filter off. We have yet to receive even one
request to do so, and certainly not from The Parka.) Today, though, I
got a slightly better quick glance at his screen, when telling him his
time had run out, and saw that he seemed to be searching some kind of
dating service instead of porn.
I still don't like the
guy. He just seems a bit creepier than necessary and he makes it a point
to ask our hours every time he comes in. In my imagination, I see him
counting down the minutes until he can next come in, but this is
probably just a false vibe.
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