Tales of the Good Patrons

I expend a lot of effort in chronicling the really annoying patrons we get. Let me tell you about some of my good patrons. In fact, I think I like this family of patrons nearly as much as my previous favorites, the Asners. Lets call them, the Hatchers, after the family from Judy Blume’s Fudge series. It’s an apt moniker because the parallels I see between the fictional Hatchers and their real life counterparts are just amazing.

So far I’ve only met Mom Hatcher and her two sons—tah dahhhh!—Peter and Fudge. They come in almost every Wednesday, around 6 p.m. to turn in their old books and look for new ones. Mom Hatcher doesn’t really resemble the illustrations of the Hatcher mom from Blume’s books, but her kids are dead ringers.

Peter is the older of the two boys, but he hasn’t quite made 4th grade yet. I’d say he’s probably a first or second grader. He still likes the Easy Reader books, though he's begun looking into chapter books a bit more. (And as soon as I can manage it, I’m going to press a copy of Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing into his mitts and tell him to keep any turtles he might own under heavy guard.) Mostly Peter wants any book that's about really big trucks or tractors or fire engines and he often likes to check out books about them that he's had before. In this, he usually needs my help.

Peter comes up to the desk, steps up on our step-stool and waits politely for me to finish whatever it is that I'm doing and ask him if he needs help. Only then will he tell me what he's after. He never knows exactly where the books are found on the shelf, nor their title, but usually knows which floor they're on, what they look like, what they were about and about what size of a book they are. This might not seem much to go on, but I can usually track them down pretty quick from this. (According to his mom, Peter's quite impressed at my ability to do this.)

My one beef with Peter, and it's not a big one, is that every time he leaves I can go into the children's room and find at least one entire row of books pushed all the way back on their shelf. Like most libraries, we like to keep our books flush with the front of the shelf they're on. I've found that many children cannot abide this and will push as many books back as they can reach, making work for us to readjust them later. Peter isn't real bad about it, though. Unlike some kids, he doesn't do the whole room. He just pushes back a given row of books on a given shelf, a different row and shelf each time. I've talked to co-workers about this and it's our feeling that he thinks he's doing us a favor, so we can't exactly get mad at him.

Peter's little brother Fudge is a four year old and is quite the bundle of energy. He doesn't run around screaming like a sugar-gorged Baboon like some kids we've had in, but like most four year olds he's very interested in his surroundings and likes coming to the library to "buy" books. A few weeks back, Fudge became entranced by the kid-sized umbrella in our children's room. This year's Summer Reading program had a water theme, so we set up a kiddie pool (sans water) and a tiny little double beach chair in the children's room that had its own tiny beach umbrella. Fudge loved the umbrella. He came up to the desk right away and stepped up on the kiddie steps to ask me about it.

"Esscuse me, but can Iyyyye take the li'l kids umbrellllla an' put it on my heaaad?"

"You want to put the umbrella on your head?" I said.

"Yeaaah."

"It’s okay with me, kid. Go crazy."

I never did see Fudge put the umbrella on his head, but I could just imagine him trying to balance the handle atop his skull, pretending he was Inspector Gadget or something. (And I, of course, never did that as a child, myself.)

On their way out, though, I thought Fudge was going to go into a crying tantrum when he learned that he couldn't check out the umbrella. He kept pleading with his mom that he wanted to "take the li'l kids umbrelllllla hoooome." I tried to explain to him that it didn't have a barcode on it so I couldn't check it out to him, but this hardly mattered to Fudge. Finally, Mrs. Hatcher diffused the situation by telling Fudge that she would buy him his own little kids umbrella next time they went to Wal-Mart. That seemed to satisfy him, though he immediately began asking if they could go to Wal-Mart "right noooow."

When the three of them reached the front door, Peter opened it to go out.

"AHHHHHHHH! I WANTED TO OPEN IT!!!" Fudge screamed, his little arms flapping in frustration.

"Well, okay. You can open it, then," Mom said.

I think Mom's terribly embarrassed at Fudge's behavior, but he's far far far from being a problem in my book.

The following week, Mrs. Hatcher and Peter came in alone. As they were leaving, Mrs. Hatcher said, "Fudge's with his grandmother tonight, so we're much less trouble." I assured her they were never trouble.

"Did Fudge get his umbrella?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! He got a Bob the Builder umbrella. He loves it. He opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it and opens it. Usually in the house."

I hope when the wife and I get around to grumping out a couple of critters ourselves, we have nice ones like Peter and Fudge, or better yet like The Asners. In fact, I was just telling the wife the other day, "When we have kids, we should try to have some nice quiet ones."

"Oh, no. Your babies are going to be LOUD," she said.

"But, couldn't we just tell the doctor that we don't want loud children and he's only to deliver quiet ones?"

"No."

"How bout this. Why don't we just go take a couple of the Asners's kids? We could leave them a note saying that we wanted nice quiet kids and since they have so many we didn't think they would mind? Huh? And we could include a note that said `In exchange, we're leaving you this cranky old cat that hates everybody. Enjoy.' Think that would work?"

"No."