WWWJD

Yesterday was our new "liberry" assistant Miss K’s first day on the job. (Miss K is, by the way, no relation to Kammy K: the Book Hoarding Bizatch.) She's pretty green, as this is maybe her second job ever and certainly first at a library, so there’s lots of stuff to be imparted to her. Mrs. C has mostly been training Miss K, but I've thrown in a few logs of advice here and there too.

One of my main objectives is to warn this naif employee about some of the patrons--of the regular, rogue and crazy varieties--she will likely encounter. The subject of one regular in particular came up when I noticed that Mrs. C had a new book of Hebrew essays over by her desk, ready for cataloging. Turned out it was for another area library, whose cataloging Mrs. C is assisting with. However, it struck me as just the sort of book Wal-Mart Jesus would probably enjoy.

"Do you know about Jesus?" I asked Miss K, grinning. Beyond the obvious humor at asking, it was a fair question. After all, having grown up in the area, Miss K was already familiar with the Purple Nun. She admitted, however, she was unfamiliar with Jesus. So I explained who Wal-Mart Jesus is, paying particular attention to details about how he always wears his Low-Rent Arab Sheik robe and flappy turban that appear to have been pulled off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. I also mentioned how he tends to carry a black leather satchel with a large home made tree-limb cudgel to defend himself against folks who mistake him for a terrorist.

"He's a really nice guy," I said, "but he can be a handful when he wants lots of photocopies made and wants you to do it."

Miss K nodded and laughed and looked nervous about it all.

At 3 o'clock I took my break and headed down to the comic shop for this week's goody bag. (Amazing Spider-Man # 515, Tom Strong #30, Concrete: The Human Dilemma #1, Supreme Power #14, Invincible Iron Man #2 and Books of Magick: Life During Wartime #6.) When I returned, Mrs. C grinned and pointed at a familiar black satchel resting behind the counter, minus the cudgel.

"Guess who she got to meet today?" Mrs. C said.

I've learned that it is not at all uncommon for patrons to magically appear at the sound of their own name. They could be absent for months, but if I mention them in common conversation or even blog about them they magically reappear. (I'm now awaiting a new visit from the Evil FedEx Guy in exchange for all the words I lavished on him. Somewhere, I'm sure his ears are burning. I hope it hurts.)

Wal-Mart Jesus's visit was uneventful. He's almost completely given up on finding a seemingly non-existent on-line copy of a particular obscure Hebrew text and is now of a mind to contact the out-of-state university that he knows owns a copy and asking if they can photocopy bits of it for him. (This has been his ongoing project for the past several months, one which I've probably spent an hour and a half total trying to help him with. We've looked and looked and what he wants does not appear to be on-line. Further complicating matters is that I can't always help him search for it because I can't read Hebrew. Fortunately, he can, but his web skills are pretty rudimentary. We make a great pair. Also, we have tried to help him locate what he wants through more traditional library means, but there are just not a whole lot of Hebrew Universities in West Virginia. I still think there's more we can do, but I'll have to consult with someone who has skills.)