Of Mice and Mentality, Part I

One of our unchronicled library regulars is a guy I'm going to call Lennie. I've not written about Lennie before because there hasn't been much to write about on the subject since this blog started last November. But he is a topic that should be addressed as he's something of an honorary "liberry" staff member.

Lennie's a mentally-challenged fellow in his mid-30s, who's tall, well-built and pretty much a perfect match for his literary namesake. To look at him, you might not even know there was anything amiss. He also reminds me a lot of Forest Gump--not the Tom Hanks Forest Gump, but rather the Gump of the original Winston Groom book who was supposed to be a really big guy whose brain just ran on a different track than most folks. That's pretty much Lennie for you. However, an even better way to describe him is how the mentally unbalanced character of Arnold Wiggins is described by his social worker Jack in the play The Boys Next Door. To paraphrase: Lennie can fool you sometimes, but his deck has no face cards.

Lennie's been a weekly fixture at the "liberry" for a number of years. He's old friends with Mrs. C, from back in their highschool days and he enjoys coming by and hanging out. In fact, he would be willing to come by and hang out every day for several hours at a stretch if we'd let him get away with it.

As far as I can tell, Lennie's ability to create and convey thoughts of his own is pretty limited. He tends to function better as a parrot of what he hears other people say. This isn't to suggest you can't carry on a conversation with him, which you can, but in conversational lulls he tends to return to whatever his theme for the day is, usually some bit of news he's picked up at one of the other businesses he hangs out in or at his grandmother's house, where he lives. If left to replay this theme, he'll play it all day and talk your ear off. We've learned that Lennie must therefore be kept busy when he's in house and must not be allowed to remain in house past his expiration point, (which is the point at which we want to say, "Take off your hat, Lennie. The air feels fine.... Now, just think of the rabbits and don't turn around...").

Before I began working at the "liberry," the staff used to have a regular problem with Lennie overstaying his welcome. After he'd been in for several hours with no sign of leaving, the staff would tell him it was time to go home and he would steadfastly ignore them. Mrs. C is just about the only person he'll pay any attention to in such circumstances, but if she wasn't on hand all bets were off as to when Lennie would leave.

Around this time, word filtered up to the library that Lennie had finally worn out his welcome at one of the barbershops downtown for refusing to leave. The barber had even gone so far as to call the police on Lennie--not that Lennie was doing anything that required police intervention, but the barber just wanted them to scare him a bit. Well, scare him they did. Badly. I'm sure they didn't mean to traumatize him, but for a guy of Lennie's mentality being put in the back of a squad car and then told it was because he stayed at the barbershop all day is very traumatic. Lennie cried and cried and avoided the barbershop for months for fear of being hauled off to jail. Instead, he began spending twice as much time at the library, which was not great either. Something needed to be done, so Mrs. C developed a plan...

TO BE CONTINUED...