Final Thursday (Final Day)

I arrived at 1p. Except for Ms. M, everyone else had gone to lunch and she was scheduled to leave when I arrived.

"So I guess I won't see you again?" she said sadly.

"Aw. I'll be back," I said. "I've got some web work still to do, so I'll probably be in next week."

Plus, there's the matter of the going away party that Mrs. A said she wants to throw but which will have to wait a couple weeks, cause she's out of town and I'm moving next week. The wife will still be in the area through the end of the month, though, so it won't be any big deal for me to pop over.

Soon Ms. D returned from lunch. She brought me a bag of coffee beans from a local coffee house.

"I asked the guy if he knew you and what kind of coffee you liked," Ms. D said. "He said he knew you, but had no idea on the coffee, so I got you house blend."

It's perfect.

The rest of my final day on the job went fairly smoothly with cameos by some classic "characters" from the blog.

The Bakers put in an early appearance and I told them it was my final day. They were happy for the wife's opportunity in Borderland, but sad to see me go. I'll miss them too. The kids have all practically grown up in the near 7 years I've been at the library. Oldest daughter, Katherine, is off to college. Middle child Brianna has changed from being a whiny, indecisive middle schooler and has blossomed into quite a stunning young lad. And next time I see little Olive, she'll probably be driving.

Mr. B-Natural came in a couple of times. The computers were glutted on his first visit, but he was able to negotiate with Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine for use of Gene's computer "for five minutes" just to check something, so Gene wouldn't have to get off. Of course, Gene's intense desire for innanet suckling only lasted about three minutes before he decided he would just leave because Mr. B-Natural was taking too long. Later Gene.

Not long after, two members of my other all-time-favorite family, The Asners, came in to pay for a fine and renew a book. It didn't occur to me in the moment, but I really should have told them that they were my favorite family. I've actually told them as much in the past, mentioning that they were a pleasure to deal with every time I saw them, but it would have been a nice parting to mention it again.

Mid-afternoon, after using the excuse of setting up the downstairs multi-purpose room for an upcoming seminar to head downstairs for a bit, Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Ms. D returned with a giant cheese cake variety pack.

"You didn't think you were getting out of here without some sort of celebration, did you?" Mrs. C asked.

"This is awesome!" I said. "Thanks."

And it was quite awesome cheesecake. We all feasted heartily.

The afternoon saw further cameos by the usual innanet crowd, including Mr. W. Perfect, Cleveland, the Hacker Family, Old Man Printer, and Germophobe Gary, who didn't even ask for a Clorox Wipe. I was really hoping for an appearance by Cap'n Crossdresser or maybe even the ghost of the Purple Nun, but at least Parka didn't show up.

And, toward the end of the day, another long lost "liberry" family member turned up in the form of Rif, the formerly high school-aged home school kid who used to hang out in the library with his sister Magenta. Rif's now a junior in college studying sports-management. His sister Magenta graduated college this year.

My duties today included checking the shelves for overdues, one last time; folding up and preparing the overdues for mailing, one last time; stuffing fund-drive envelopes, one last time; processing new magazines, one last time; and rearranging those magazines in our magazine shelf which is, as always, plagued on a daily basis by people who have no concept of putting periodicals back where they found them instead of cramming them in at random.

My final check out of the day was The Calder Game, by Blue Balliett, checked out to my writer friend Linda.

Before I clocked out, I took all of my remaining red shelving slips and pinned them to the staff bulletin board with a note that read "This color is now retired." I then gathered up my satchel ("It's not a manpurse, dammit!"), and my toiletries (toothbrush, tooth paste, bottle of Cetaphil, hair gunk, mouthwash, defunk, etc.) from my locker. I then affixed to my bag my locker's mini-post-it label of JUICE TWO-BELTS. I grabbed the remainder of my cheesecake and headed out the staff workroom door toward my car.

On my way out, I noticed that I'd left my pot of hens & chicks by the back door. I thought of stopping to get them, but I can catch `em next time. I'm not done with this place yet.

I'm also not done with this blog. There are still a few tales left to tell, not to mention a move (or two) to commence.

"Liberry" Glossary: Repeat Offender

Repeat Offender

-noun phrase

1. A member of the innanet crowd who signs in for computer time, stays for while, leaves, returns to sign up for more, leaves again, returns to sign up for more again, etc., repeat cycle until closing time. Repeat Offenders are not always rogue patrons, but often are. The offense inherent in their title stems from the fact that, due to our usual bad attitudes, the staff becomes completely sick of dealing with these people since we have to go out and log them onto a computer with each successive visit and we wish they would just get what they're doing done the first time and go away. We're particularly annoyed with patrons such as Germophobe Gary, who not only leave and return repeatedly throughout the day, but demand a new Clorox Disinfecting Wipe with each visit so that our keyboards might be rendered safe for him to touch. (We can't really blame him, but it is still a very annoying extra step for us.) Very often, Repeat Offenders are also the patrons who do the most amount of printing from the computers and are constantly pestering us to look at their prints, compounding our bad attitude toward them. Usual suspects among the current Repeat Offenders crowd include: Germaphobe Gary, Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, Mr. B-Natural, Mr. W. Perfect, The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, Johnny Hacker, Mr. Little Stupid. Former Repeat Offenders include: Parka, Crusty the Patron, Stoner Lad.
   

Meet the Hackers

The "liberry" has been hacked. No, not this blog, but the "liberry" itself. And, no, not the "liberry's" computer systems, but, instead, our immune systems.

Let me back up.

One of our long-time regular and allegedly "good" patrons is a guy who I will call Johnny "Hacker" James, after the kid who hacked NASA. Johnny's a young adult who still lives at home when not attending the local community college. He and his family visit us several times a week to use the computers, read periodicals and occasionally check out books. They're all very nice people.

Johnny came in last evening and signed up for a computer. I logged him on and he sat down. During the sign up and login process, I heard Johnny cough a couple of times. They were little, hacking coughs of the sort you hear when people have a tickle in their throat. Usually, with such throat tickles, you can hack a couple of times and you're done, no? Not Johnny. He proceeded to emit one or two of those little hacking coughs every 10 to 20 seconds for the next three hours. And let me assure you, I am not exaggerating AT ALL.

Sometimes Johnny's hacks were quiet little coughs. Sometimes they were quite loud. Sometimes Johnny would add a bit of voice into it and really give it some power, but his throat evidently continued to tickle and he continued to hack away every 10 to 20 seconds. This very swiftly began to drive me crazy in a water-torture kind of way.

As my wife can tell you, one of my greatest pet peeves in life is the coughing of other people. I know, I know... coughing fits are beyond the control of most human beings, myself included when I get sick. Doesn't mean I have to like hearing them. Not only are they offensive to me because they usually mean a sick person is potentially spreading their illness into our shared atmosphere, but also because coughing is a full stop interruption to whatever else might be going on--say a conversation taking place or dialogue in a movie that can be difficult to undertand through a torrent of coughing. And if there's one thing I've learned in my years of working at the "liberry" it's this: no matter what illness a person might have, no matter how communicable it might be, no matter how many days they've been out of work because of it or how miserable they feel, that infected soul will not think twice about coming to the library and staying for hours on end, coughing and sneezing away, because damn if they're going to miss out on some innanet time.

As crazy as Johnny's hacking was driving me, I knew it had to be completely freaking out Germophobe Gary, who was seated at the opposite end of Johnny's particular row of computer terminals. Germophobe Gary is another recent addition to our "good" or Sundry Others patron ranks. He's only been visiting us regularly for the past couple of months and has proven himself notable for the frequency of both his visits and his requests that we supply him with Clorox wipes with which he can protect himself from the patron squeezings of previous users. As irritating as this is, I can't really blame him.

Meanwhile, Johnny continued to hack and hack and hack and hack and hack and hack and hack. I desperately wanted to go up to him and scream, "Listen, Cap'n Tripps, you're going to need to take that shit outside and HACK IT THE HELL UP! Cause, if you keep coughing like that, I'm going to have to haul our PDR over here and bust you in the head with it! Try coughing when you're unconscious!"

In Johnny's defense, he did politely cover his mouth with his hand with each and every hack I witnessed. And then he would lower that infected hand back to the computer keyboard and contaminate it further. He also at least had the decency to look ashamed whenever I caught his eye during a particularly loud burst of hacking.

At one point, Mr. B-Natural happened in for a computer. I tried to put him on the available computer farthest away from Johnny--after all, Mr. B-Natural is elderly and more susceptible to infection--but Mr. B-Natural doesn't like the other computer because one time it crashed on him mid-crossword puzzle, so he insisted I move him to the one directly beside Johnny. I complied. Mr. B-Natural didn't stay very long.

After two and a half hours of solid hacking on Johnny's part, his parents arrived. Johnny's father, as usual, grabbed a few magazines and had a seat in a comfy chair where he too proceeded to hack and hack and hack. Oh, great! A whole family of hackers! Granted, Mr. Hacker's hacking was not as incessant as his son's, occurring only once every few minutes, but clearly the virus had spread.

Johnny kept right on hacking away, but also upped the ante by demonstrating how his cold had progressed into his nose by pulling out an enormous hand-towel which he blew his nose into repeatedly and ferociously, returning his freshly snotty (or at the very least snotproximate) hands to the keyboard afterward. I shuddered with every honk.

Following several particularly loud and voice-intensive hacks in a row, Johnny's mother walked over and spoke to him in stern yet hushed tones. He looked a little embarrassed at first, but then seemed to offer some protest in a kind of "What do you expect me to do about it? Stop using the innanet and go home?" sort of way. I didn't actually hear her statement, nor his reply, nor her reply to his reply, but the answer to what I presume was said seemed to be "Yes." Soon the whole family departed, hacking away.

After enough time had passed that I was sure they had cleared the parking lot, I grabbed our Clorox wipes and used three of them to scour Johnny's keyboard, mouse, monitor, his chair and the surrounding area. I also cleaned all the front door handles, the handles of the restroom door, the water fountain where he'd sipped water and basically anything I even suspected Johnny might have touched.

I never caught Germophobe Gary's gaze during the detoxification process, but I'm sure he appreciated the gesture.