Mr. B-Natural Slakes his Thirst for Righteous Vengeance with the "Liberry's" Blood

It's been a long time since we've had any trouble from Mr. B-Natural. Mostly he's been an ideal patron. He even came in recently and asked me if I would teach him how to save files to a CD ROM using his new laptop. I showed him how and he seemed quite friendly about it and far from his usual Grumpiest-Old-Man-in-All-the-World self.

Last week he got far grumpier.

Long-time readers may recall the saga of Mr. B-Natural and his beloved dog, Bubba. They might also recall the night to day transformation Mr. B-Natural underwent after he first acquired Bubba and began bringing him into the "liberry" as his emissary to the world. They might also recall how, three years back, Bubba brought a plague of fleas into the "liberry" and was subsequently banned from setting foot in the building.

At the time of the banning, Mr. B-Natural protested that Bubba didn't have fleas and staged a walkout over the matter, refusing to set foot in our building himself. After a few months of this, though, he realized that this was hardly punishing us so he came back. Occasionally, if Mrs. A was about, he would drop comments about how Bubba sure does miss the library and how he still doesn't have fleas. Mrs. A would only smile and tell him that we too missed Bubba and that we would love to come out to Mr. B-Natural's car and visit the dog sometime.

Over the past year, though, other dogs have begun to visit us. One of our patrons, Carrie, a frequent and very, very generous donor, began bringing her dog into the library. Granted, she was only there with the dog to briefly visit us or drop off a check and never to hang around, but there were several near-misses with Mr. B-Natural almost seeing the pooch. With Carrie being a massive donor (who actually made a huge donation in her dog's name; an event which prompted us to joke that when Bubba came up with anything approaching that amount he could come back too) we were a little hesitant to forbid her to bring her dog in.

Next up, a member of our board of directors, Mrs. Em, recently bought a puppy which she has insisted on bringing into the building despite the fact that she knows full well that animals are not allowed and that Mr. B-Natural will rain shit down on our heads were he to ever see it. I like her dog even less because it bit me, but, again, what are you going to do?

Then Mr. B-Natural did see Mrs. Em's dog.

Saw it several times, even.

In fact, for about a week running, Mr. B-Natural seemed to have developed the mutant ability to arrive at the "liberry" only when Mrs. Em was in-house with her dog. And, as before, he began dropping comments to Mrs. A about how the puppy would make a wonderful playmate for dear Bubba. Mr. B-Natural never got mad or raised a big stink, but he was understandably unhappy about it, as he has been for years now. Mrs. A tried to explain things to him by saying that the other dog was only passing through on business and was not hanging around for hours at a time like Bubba used to. Mr. B-Natural's reaction to this was to turn and walk out.

Mrs. A thought about this situation and decided that if she couldn't ban the dogs of donors and board-members, she couldn't very well ban Bubba. It was time to stop playing favorites. She announced to Mrs. C that we would need to change our policy to allow visits from dogs, provided they remained on the tiled area just inside the front doors. They would break the good news to Mr. B-Natural when next he visited

When I came in for work this past Friday, I saw a sign taped to the glass of our front door that read "Service Animals Only." I wondered what the story behind it was and soon the alphabet squad of Mrs.es A, B and C told me.

Mrs. A explained her decision to rescind Bubba's ban. However, before she could alert Mr. B-Natural to it, he'd phoned Mr. Hooter, the president of our board of directors, to raise hell about the veritable zoo we were letting run free in the "liberry." He insisted that if Bubba was banned all other animals should be banned as well, save for service animals. Furthermore, Mr. B-Natural wanted a signs put up to this effect and wanted the policy enforced for all parties. Mr. Hooter was in agreement.

"I can't blame him," I told Mrs. A upon the conclusion of the tale. "I would have done exactly the same thing in his position." Granted, there's the irony that if he'd kept his trap shut for another day or so he would have finally gotten his way and been able to bring Bubba back, but I completely see his perspective of the issue. It isn't fair to let other people bring dogs in and not him. And since he'd already complained to Mrs. A on any number of occasions, he felt he had no other course. Mrs. A said she saw his point too, but would have handled things differently had she been in his shoes.

"So, I guess we won't be seeing him for a few more months?" I said.

"Oh, no. He's been in three or four times since Wednesday," Mrs. B said.

"He keeps checking to make sure we have the sign up," Mrs. C added.

And, an hour or two later, Mr. B-Natural did arrive for some computing time. I made it a point to smile at him when he came in, hopefully communicating that I bear him no ill-will and am, for once, on his side.

Mr. B-Notary?

Speaking of dogs in the building, one of our favorite neighbors of the "liberry" is a lady named Carrie, who bought the house of our former "liberry" neighbor Mona, when Mona moved away a few months back. Carrie visits us frequently and is a considerable "liberry" donor. Unfortunately, she owns a small yap dog which she insists on bringing with her where ever she goes and almost always brings it into the library when she visits. Mrs. A has been concerned that Mr. B-Natural would catch sight of the dog and then throw a big, righteous, Grumpiest Old Man in all the World hissy that someone else's dog was allowed to come in the building but his was banned. She's not been so worried, though, that she's asked Carrie not to bring her pooch. (Did I mention she's a major donor?) So far, Mr. B-Natural hasn't seen the dog, but there have been some close calls.

In the middle of last week's story hour, Mr. B-Natural came up to the desk clutching a fistful of papers.

"I need to get these notarized," he said. "You a notary?"

"No, I'm not and both of our others are busy at the moment," I said. Then I recalled that Mrs. A was actually in the building and is a notary. I told Mr. B-Natural that I might have one for him after all and went upstairs to find Mrs. A.

Upon returning to the desk, I told him, "She'll be down in a couple minutes." I then tried to find something productive to do while we both stood there waiting.

"I already signed these papers," Mr. B-Natural offered.

I gave him the long, slow burn look. "You're not supposed to sign them until the notary can witness it," I said. "MRS. A won't be able to notarize that unless she witnesses you sign it." THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF A NOTARY!

"Ahhhhh, I can just sign it again," he grumped.

Mrs. A came down from her office, saw that he'd already signed the papers and reiterated the purpose of a notary to him. Mr. B-Natural told her he could just sign it again over his previous signature and she reluctantly agreed to witness that. While he was doing so, the door opened and in came Carrie and her pooch. Carrie was dropping something off and came right up to the desk, within a foot of Mr. B-Natural, and passed it over the desk to Mrs. A. Fortunately, Carrie had somewhere else she needed to be and departed before Mr. B-Natural had a chance to look up. As Carrie left, Mrs. A turned and gave me a horrified look at the bullet we'd just dodged. It's not that she's afraid of Mr. B-Natural's wrath, but that doesn't mean she wants to listen to it either. Plus, he would have a point. We're playing favorites with dogs. Granted, Carrie's pooch is far less likely to be riddled with the kind of fleas Bubba has delivered to us in the past, but it's still not being completely fair.

A-MINUS: 4

B's Fleas

Mr. B-Natural was in Thursday. He's been back intermittently over the past couple weeks, but it seems like he's probably going to be a regular again.

On his way out, he couldn't resist stopping by the circulation desk to take a quick verbal jab at Mrs. A for banning his dog Bubba for spreading fleas in the library. He told her that Bubba misses us and that when he last drove up to park at the library with his dog in the car, Bubba became excited that he was about to go in again until Mr. B told him, "Nope. Ya gotta stay. MRS. A has fleas."

Mrs. A laughed heartily at this, then told Mr. B-Natural, "We'd love to see Bubba too. He can come up to the front step and we'll all come out and pet him. But he still can't come in."

"That dog didn't have fleas," Mr. B-Natural said.

"Well, think of it like this," Mrs. A said. "Not bringing him in here kept him from getting them, because we certainly had them in here."

Mr. B-Natural grumbled a bit, then said, "People can carry fleas too."

After he said that, there was a long pause among the employees of the library. I'm almost certain that if there were a comic book version of that moment, there would have been a large collective thought balloon drawn above all our heads with a picture of Mr. Stanky in the center of it.

The Return of the Cranky King

Mr. B-Natural, crankiest old man in all the world and long lost missing rogue since we banned his dog, Bubba, for infesting our library with fleas this past summer, came in Wednesday at around 5:30. Wow, he was cranky! I've not seen him that fired up in a loooong time.

He came in, sans dog, just behind two burly gentlemen wearing ball caps that advertised heavy construction equipment. They also had a considerable amount of dried mud on their feet, much of which they left on our runner carpet. The mud-caked gentlemen wished to use computers. Mr. B-Natural, who we rarely saw after 5 back when we regularly saw him, also wanted one. The cranky part came next.

I'll have to take his word for this, as I did not smell it myself, but according to Mr. B-Natural, the older of the two gentlemen was something of a farter and had let fly with a foul cloud just prior to entering the building. Again, I never smelled it. In fact, the only thing I could smell was the delicious yet lingering aroma of the club salad I had just eaten, which I'm not convinced isn't what he was smelling in the first place. (Maybe says something about my choice in salads.) He didn't tell me about it right away. Instead, he headed back to the computer hall, presumably to escape the gas.

"Don't you smell that?" he asked me while I logged on computers for the other men. He told me about his farter theory, ending with, "Gotta be that old man!"

In between bouts of being insulting, he was eyeing the computers that I was logging on. I pointed out that he'd still not signed in on the clip board up front and needed to do so before he could have a computer of his own. Loudly cursing about the horrible farty stench (which I still couldn't detect) and the sorts of old men who are full of such smells (never mind that the old man in question was standing RIGHT THERE as Mr. B's accusations flew), Mr. B-Natural accompanied me back to the circ desk. He signed in, upside down, as in accordance with tradition, then returned to the computer hall. Within 30 seconds, he was back at the desk, practically gasping for air. He began yet another loud curse-filled rant on his new favorite topic of gassy old men who can stink up entire buildings. (And this from a guy who never uttered a single word of complaint when seated directly beside Mr. Stanky, lo those many months ago.)

"Are you sure it's not my salad?" I said, pointing to my open salad container.

"Hell no, it's not a salad!" Mr. B angrily fired back. "Makes me want to puke! I'm gonna have to take my teeth out and wash them before I do anything else!" He said this, I might add, while stuffing multiple cookies from our holiday open house goodies table into his mouth. The "stench" had not dampened his appetite.

"Can't I just use one of these?" he said, indicating our card catalog computer and Mrs. C's computer.

"Nope. Patron's can't use those for the internet."

"Shit."

Eventually Mr. B stopped cursing quite so much and calmed down. However, that left me standing there with him staring at me as he waited, I suppose, for the place to air out.

"So..." I began, looking for some kind of small talk. "How's Bubba doing?"

"Oh, he's pretty good. Had to leave him at home to come down here cause MRS. A won't let him in anymore."

"Well, I miss Bubba," I offered. And I do. I'd rather have Bubba in than Mr. B-Natural.

"It's a goddam shame too! That dog didn't have no fleas!" Mr. B said. "He sleeps in the same bed as I do and I don't have fleas." He rambled on a bit more in this vein, explaining that he uses the Hartz flea-killer medicine on Bubba and how it's the kind you're supposed to use once every three months, but Mr. B-Natural uses it on his dog once a month, just to make sure.

"Then some woman up and gets flea bit and they all blame Bubba! Shit!"

Finally, Mr. B-Natural left me alone and returned to the computer hall. I set about trying to write down as much of the encounter as I could. I didn't get far because he was back, barely three minutes later.

"That internet has to be the most goddam frustrating thing in my whole life!" he said. "I can't make heads or tails on how to send this e-mail to somebody. Can you help me send an e-mail?"

Aw hell, I thought. The last thing I wanted to have to do was hand hold him through the Hotmail signup process. It's bad enough with pleasant patrons. Still, there was a chance I might not have to.

"Uh, do you already have an e-mail account?" I asked.

"Yeah. I got e-mail with Yahoo. But I hit compose and it's not working and it's the damndest thing. Jesus Christ!"

I walked around the desk and back to the computer hall where I found a blank Yahoo e-mail compose window on his screen.

"That wasn't there before," he said. "It had to have come up while I was gone."

"Well, you can just type their e-mail address in that blank there and then write the e-mail," I said. "You do know their e-mail address right?"

"Yeah. I have to check something on it first," he said.

I left him to it. Occasionally, I had cause to go back to shelve books on tape or log someone else on and every time I would hear him grumbling and adding the occasional "Jesus Christ!"

Mr. B-Natual's half hour ended and then another ten minutes crawled by. I left him alone. He was not, however, going to extend the same courtesy to me.

"This has got to be the most frustrating damn thing in my whole life," he repeated on his way back to the front desk.

I followed him back to his computer to see what was wrong. There on his screen was, of all things, Martha Stewart's home page. As you might have heard, Martha is currently residing in our fair state as a guest of the Alderson Women's Prison. Mr. B-Natural next showed me a news article, several browser screens back, that was about sentencing reform, which also mentioned Martha and her new digs and gave the address for her home page. Mr. B-Natural wanted to write an e-mail to Martha, but every time he clicked the "e-mail Martha" button from her home page it refused to "do any goddam thing." I could see that this was because the "e-mail Martha" button was actually a "mailto:" link with her e-mail address in it. Whenever he pressed the button, the computer tried to load Outlook Express in order to plug the address in. Trouble is, we don't have Outlook on those machines, so Windows just opened up the executable search to try and find a suitable replacement.

About that time, Mr. B-Natural started a new rant against technology the likes of which the Unabomber would have been proud to have penned. While he was busy with all that, I did a copy shortcut on the link button and then told him to open up his Yahoo mail page again. When he finally got a compose window open, (which, in his defense, did take an irritatingly long time to come up), I pasted Martha's address into the TO: blank. Mr. B-Natural was astounded.

"How the hell'd you do that?"

I showed him how the hell I'd done that.

"Well, I'll be," he said.

After that, Mr. B-Natual whiled away another half hour typing his e-mail to Martha. When he had finished and sent it, he came back up to the circulation desk and thanked me for helping him. He seemed genuinely pleased about it. Before he left, he said, "You know, I could have said the same thing to a person face to face and it would have taken less than 30 seconds."

I just smiled and watched him go.

I would truly love to know what he said to her.

Rogue Sighting

The wife and I slept late and got an even later start preparing to leave for breakfast. Before we could depart, Mrs. C phoned me and asked if I would stop at the Town-C branch to check on their computers. We had a huge electrical storm last night and none of the computers were working there, including circulation. Complicating matters further, Town-C's librarian, Mrs. S, was out of town at a meeting with Mrs. A accompanying. A volunteer had been left to man the desk and nothing her instruction sheet was telling her to do was working.

Town-C's library branch isn't nearly as busy as my own in Town-A. It's not nearly as nice either, but is also 150 years younger and is of the prefab octagonal cookie cutter library design that was popular in the state some decades back, when getting cheap libraries into smaller communities was all the rage.

Sure enough, none of the computers seemed to be doing much. The patron computers wouldn't connect to the internet and the circulation computer wouldn't even let me into Win XP. The volunteer who was working thought for sure it was somehow her fault. It wasn't.

While I was trying to convince the circulation computer to load, who should walk in the door but Mr. B-Natural and his dog Bubba. We've not actually seen Mr. B at our branch since we banned Bubba from coming in due to the flea infestation that he allegedly caused. I thought, mistakenly it seems, that we were the only area library that would tolerate dogs, so I didn't see why Mr. B was so upset by it that he would refuse to come back to our branch at all. But we've certainly not seen any of him for over an entire month. There was a time when we would have paid good money to achieve that effect, but as it's being achieved at Bubba's expense, I'm not so happy about it. Neither is my wife. She thinks its a crime that we won't let Bubba in. She immediately began petting Bubba and telling Mr. B-Natural what a charmer his dog was. He beamed.

When Mr. B-Natural saw me at the desk, he smiled and said, "What are you doing down here?"

"Just trying to whip this computer into shape."

I finally did get that computer whipped into shape, but couldn't convince it to connect to the internet. Even after 10 minutes on the phone with one of our techs and some time spent turning the router, server computer, and battery backup on and off, we couldn't get it to come up. We finally chalked it up to being Verizon's problem and I was able to leave for lunch with my woman.

Mr. B-Missing?

Kind of an odd Sunday shift in that it was utterly free of Mr. B-Natural. He's usually the first patron of the day and is almost always waiting at the door when I drive up. Not so today. I'm guessing he's still pissed about his dog being banned from the library and so he's staying away in protest.

Normally, my response to such a protest would be, "And this is a bad thing, how?" But I do feel a bit sorry for him in this case. As my wife pointed out, while Mr. B-Natural is indeed the grumpiest old man in all the world, he's also a fairly lonely guy. Not surprising, what with his being so grumpy. However, he'd mellowed so much over the past few months due entirely to the presence of Bubba the Dog. See, Bubba is Mr. B's ambassador to the world. Everyone loves Bubba (especially fleas, mind you, but people too), who is a genuinely sweet and happy dog that attracts positive attention which gets vicariously shared by Mr. B-Natural. With Bubba around, people actually smile at Mr. B-Natural and are happy to have him around. Without Bubba, he's just a cranky old man that no one will have much to do with.

So, he's probably off sulking somewhere.

Without Mr. B-Natural in today, I had to make do with two, count `em two, separate visits from Parka plus an appearance by Matilde the Cranky Wiccan. She gave me a bit of trouble too.

When Matilde came in to sign up for a computer, I told her it would be a couple of minutes because the computers were full. I was just coming around the desk to go boot one of the patron's whose time had run out when Matilde stepped in front of me and started back to the computers herself. I thought: What part of "It's gonna be a couple of minutes" didn't you understand, lady? She went right to the computer hall, then saw they were full and turned around to come back, nearly colliding with me in the process. When the computer was finally clear, I went and told her and pointed back to the hall. She went. Then, about 4:50, I went back to get garbage bags from the bathroom and to tell her that she only had 10 minutes left until we closed. This news elicited not even the usual annoyed grunt from her, though. At 5 p.m. sharp, I went back and told her "It's about that time." Again, not a word. She just kept right on typing on the e-mail she had open. I kept myself busy for half a minute, putting a new liner in the garbage can by the bathroom, then started shutting off computers in an effort to reinforce my point that we were closing. I didn't want to have to repeat myself to her, but it looked like I might need to.

"Oh, am I out of time?" she asked, after I shut off the computer beside hers.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"What?"

"Yes, ma'am!" I repeated, nodding. Only then did I realize that Matilde the Cranky Wiccan is hard of hearing. It certainly explains why she was so quiet the whole time. I only felt a little bad for heaping such silent ire in her direction.

As to the fleas, they seem to have been eradicated. I wore shorts and got nary a bite.

Poor Bubba

I went to work at 1 today and Mrs. C told me to go read the sign on the front door. The sign said the library would be closing at 5.

Whoo hoo! I get to go home early! This is good, as the wife is coming home from Clarksburg for the weekend and I had been a bit concerned as to how quickly I would have to come up with dinner after getting off at 7.

As to WHY we were closing early, Mrs. C enlightened me...

It seems we have fleas.

That's right, fleas.

Mrs. J found several of the little buggers attempting to bite her while she was shelving today. Suddenly, almost everyone was finding little bumps on their ankles that they had been at a loss to explain until that moment. So the plan was for us to close early and bug bomb the snot out of them. (Why exactly we needed to close early in order to bug bomb them, I'm not sure. Seems just as simple to bug bomb them after 7 as it would be after 5, but I certainly kept my mouth shut on this point.)

Mrs. A, still on vacation this week, but doing so at home, phoned in to give us some new policy regarding the fleas. To keep fleas from coming back after they've been bombed, we are now outlawing all animals other than service animals in the library. We've been very dog friendly in the past, allowing them to run free in the library. However, during most weeks, the dog population pretty much amounts to Mr. B-Natural's pooch Bubba. It will be sad to have a library with no Bubba, but what are ya gonna do? We can't have fleas infesting the joint either.

Mrs. C was the one to break the news to Mr. B-Natural when he and Bubba came in for their mid-morning computer crossword puzzle.

"What?" Mr. B-Natual said. He's supposedly hard of hearing, but I'm pretty sure it's a selective condition.

"I said, you can't bring Bubba in any more," she said. "We're having trouble with fleas."

"He shouldn't have any fleas. I gave him the flea treatment and washed him. No, Bubba doesn't have any fleas," Mr. B said. Of course, while he was saying this, Bubba was sitting on the floor beside him violently scratching at a flea.

"We're not saying Bubba brought the fleas in," Mrs. C told him. (Who is she kidding? That's exactly what we're saying.) "We're just saying that we have fleas and we don't want any more and you don't want them getting on Bubba either."

After Mrs. C related the above story, I said, "You do realize, of course, that Bubba will now become the new smuggled coffee cup for him, right? He'll start trying to sneak that dog in in his coat, just like he did his coffee."

Hours later in the day, the phone rang and a gruff voice asked to speak to Mrs. A.

"I'm sorry, but she's on vacation this week," I said.  "Can I take a message?"

Mr. B-Natual's familiar grumbling commenced for a few seconds before it resolved into the phrase, "When will she be back?" I told Mr. B-Natural she'd be in on Monday. Apparently, he's none too happy about his dog being banned. I'm not really sure why, other than it's an opportunity for him to be all grumpy about something. No other library in the county allows him to bring Bubba in, so I don't see what the big deal is now that we won't. Of course, it's not like he hasn't tried other places.

Mrs. H, who also works at the library branch in Town-D, said Mr. B-Natural tried to bring Bubba in her library one day until the head librarian saw the dog and said, "Nope. Out. He can't come in."

Mr. B-Natural paused in the door and shouted, "Hateful old woman!" then he took Bubba back to his car and left.

Now that's the old Mr. B-Natural we all knew and loathed.