Friday, March 21, 2008

Today's Odd Bird

I haven't worked a Thursday morning during story hour for a couple of months now, but managed to trade into it for yesterday. Glad I did, or I would have missed out on witnessing both the world's noisiest nonfiction stacks Easter Egg hunt and a new odd bird patron.

The odd bird was a little old man who came in, turned in his books and marched off to the shelves to find more. He seemed completely normal, save for a wildly bushy gray moustache and a particular item of clothing. This gentleman was wearing a dark green quilted hunter's coat that covered a similarly green button up shirt, a trucker-style ball cap embroidered with the logo of an area volunteer fire-fighting unit, and he was wearing a blue denim knee-length skirt from beneath which jutted the skinniest, whitest chicken-legs I've ever seen.

No, it was not a kilt. Instead, it was as if a skinny little old man and a skinny little old woman had been cleaved in two by advanced alien intelligences and then grafted back together with the wrong bottom half. There was nothing whatsoever, in manner nor deed, feminine about the top half, but then you hit that skirt and those legs and there was no denying something wasn't quite adding up.

Old Man Womanlegs eventually checked out a few books. His first name, at least according to the patron record that he used, was Beatrice. He departed before any of my fellow employees could see him and I decided not to bring him up as a subject for fear they wouldn't believe me. After about 20 minutes, though, Old Man Womanlegs returned and asked if we could put him on hold for the new John Grisham. This time Mrs. B caught a glimpse of him as he left and said she had actually seen him in Wally World recently but had assumed he was just wearing really baggy shorts.

Nope. That man was wearin' a dress.

While we were on the subject of crossdressing patrons, Mrs. B noted that Cap'n Crossdresser had also paid us a visit earlier in the week. She said his springtime sundress was quite lovely, though it didn't match his workboots.

3 comments:

Kerry said...

So the theme song was Richard Thompson's "Woman Or A Man?"

Jack said...

Good, gods, Juice! We've got something sort of like that at our library, too. We call him Skirtman. He comes in often, wearing usually either a black and white fringed skirt with a yellow tube top or a baggy basketball type shirt with blue leggings. Not disturbing enough by itself apparently, but some time ago, when leaving the liberry for the night, SM decided to wink at me as he was exiting the building. Creeped me the heck out!

Jack said...

That, or "Dude Looks Like a Lady" by Aerosmith...


An employee of a small town "liberry" chronicles his quest to remain sane while dealing with patrons who could star in a short-lived David Lynch television series.