The Good Monday 2008

Ahh, that was refreshing!

We had a nice, mostly unchaotic Monday, for once. Okay, sure, seven people assaulted the front door in an attempt to get before our 1p opening and most of them demanded computers after we actually opened, but we weren't packed full for the whole day as usual. The book return had only one armload of books in it and Ms. M and I were able to stave off and/or help the usual amount of needy Monday patrons, "assisted" occasionally by Lennie, (whose major conversation theme of the day was how well WVU is doing in sports).

The only real challenge of the day came when Ms. M became entangled in a telephone conversation with someone for the better part of ten minutes. I didn't know who she was speaking to on our main circ-desk phone, but from her answers of "No... yes... no... no... yes..." and occasional recital of vital "liberry" contact information I knew that it had to be some sort of telemarketing situation. From the sound of it, it was for some national directory listing. While it's always nice to have the library properly listed in such directories, I couldn't see why they needed to grill her for 10 minutes on other minor points better left answered by officially licensed librarians, I'm still not sure, but grill her they did and tenaciously so. Not wanting to do the wrong thing or be perceived as rude, Ms. M held still while they applied her to the coals, but her expression changed from nervous to frustrated to bewildered during it. I kept giving her the international sign-language for "hang the hell up" but she wouldn't do it. I even offered to tell the person off for her, but she again refused.

Then the other line began to ring and I whispered to her that this was her grand opportunity to get off by telling them she had another call she had to take. She attempted this, but their little Telemarketer-teeth hung on fiercely as the line continued to ring. After three rings, I gave up on Ms. M and went to answer it in the staff workroom. As soon as I picked it up, though, Lennie bellowed, "It's okay, JUICE got it!" This, as I later learned, was easily overheard by the telemarketer who tightened her grip on Ms. M's phone ear and said, "Oh, so you can keep talking, then."

Fortunately, the call I took was from a patron looking to renew a book and with the circ-desk phone being the only one near a circ-desk computer, I was able to convey to Ms. M that I would be needing that phone and that she had to wrap it up with the telemarketer. I tell you, it took a hot match-head to remove that particular phone parasite, but eventually they let go of Ms. M and scuttled back under their rock.

"Who the hell was that?" I asked.

"The Yellow Pages," Ms. M said.

"Wow," I said. "I got a call from Yellow Book last week and they weren't nearly as bad."

Who's Got the 10 and a Half (minus the half) 2007?

My fellow "liberry" ass. and former newbie greenhorn, Ms. M, is almost always willing to fill in whenever any of the rest of the staff have pressing outside scheduling conflicts. I had one of those earlier this week and she was kind enough to fill in for me during it. She's actually racked up quite a bit of credit with me in that regard over the past few months, so when I heard she needed Thursday off I figured it was time to pay her back. Granted, I was already scheduled to be at work from 9 to 1 today, which would turn this into a 10 hour shift. I agreed all the same. It's been a while since I've had a 10 hour shift, but in the past they've been great blogging fodder. And at least with Mrs. A, B, C and J present, it wouldn't be a 10 hour solo shift, which is what my previous 10 hour shifts have usually been. The drawback to it being a near full staff shift, though, is that it's difficult to blog it in real time. So I spent the day jotting notes to myself on scrap paper and tucking them into spare pockets to be able to reconstruct at home the following day. 

9:02 a.m.— I arrive at work 2 minutes after 9 due to leaving the house a bit late. However, it was completely necessary for me to make a new thermos full of coffee.

9:05 a.m.— The Coot arrives for what will likely be a 10 hour stay himself. He heads for his favorite seat outside Mrs. A's office where, as in accordance with tradition, he will groan and wail and burp and fart whenever Mrs. A has to use the phone or, indeed, her voice. 

9:15 a.m.— I process the huge stack of periodicals that have piled up since I was last here. As I do so, Mrs. C and Mrs. B are inspecting the general fiction walls, pulling shelving slips out of books and noting whether or not they are shelved correctly. Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S, as per usual, has several that are misshelved, a surprise to no one.  

9:37 a.m.— The staff discusses the fact that we have to move story hour from our usual activity area to the upstairs nonfiction floor due to the fact that we're having a class of violinists and their instructor in today to play for the story hour kids. We put signs up to that effect on the activity room door and then another on the library's front door in the hope that our traditional late comers, (i.e. little Kayla's family), will note them and be quiet when entering. 

9:41 a.m.— Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine arrives for his first computer shift of the day. 

9:45 a.m.— A few months back, Ms. S ran out of her usual orange shelving slips. At that point, she cut out and carefully initialed a large supply of pink shelving slips and in the intervening months, she's continued to use both orange and pink. Recently, former newbie greenhorn Ms. M ran out of her yellow shelving slips, so she too cut a bunch out of pink ones and carefully initialed them, apparently so that they wouldn't be confused with Ms. S's pink shelving slips. While sorting the various slips that Mrs. C and Mrs. B pulled earlier, I make a command decision and announce to the rest of the staff at hand that I am throwing away both sets of pink slips on the grounds that it is moronic to have them in the first place.

9:54 a.m.— The Bakers arrive for story hour. They bring 12,000 books to return. Amazingly, all of their books are from our library branch. 

9:55 a.m.— Mr. B-Natural arrives for his first computer session. He puts 10:00 as his signup time, no doubt thinking it will give him five extra minutes. I start his timer so it won't. 

10:00 a.m.— Story Hour begins. Kayla's family fails to arrive, a surprise to no one. Tuning of stringed instruments can be heard through the very floor above my head. I'm sure the Coot is thrilled.  

10:05 a.m.— I start checking the shelves for this week's overdues.  

10:10 a.m. — Little Kayla's family still has yet to arrive. 

10:27 a.m.— Mr. B-Natural departs, inquiring about the violin noise as he does.  

10:46 a.m.— While still checking shelves for overdues, I see that someone's flagged one of the books I shelved as being misshelved. I double check it, but cannot determine how it is misshelved. It's a mystery book shelved in the mysteries section, it's way too old to be in new fiction, and it's author, Davis, is shelved neatly after Davies and before Debin, just as it should be. What gives?  

11:00 a.m.— Story hour concludes. I notice Gene disappeared at some point, for he is no longer on his computer, nor the can, nor elsewhere in the building. 

11:16 a.m.— No way. It's not even noon and the mail has already arrived. Glory be!  

11:28 a.m.— I sneak away to my hidy-hole in the supply cabinet and retrieve my emergency toothbrush, with which I head to the sink outside our little public restroom under the stairs to brush my teeth and rid myself of coffee breath. No sooner is the brush in my mouth than the Coot squeezes past me to use the can. No good can come of this. I hurriedly brush my teeth and flee the area before he can release any fumes at me.  

11:30 a.m.— I spy the Coot outside, headed for his car. He better have flushed.  

11:40 to 11:47 a.m.— Mrs. A, Mrs. B, Mrs. J and I all stand around and tell Ms. S stories, chronicling her latest misadventures in dumbassity. 

 11:50 a.m. — While pulling some shelving slips Mrs. C and Mrs. B missed, I find another pink shelving slip, this one with Ms. S’s initials on one side and Ms. M’s initials on the other. Damn, they’re conspiring together now!!  

12:03 p.m. — I walk down the street to the local market to pick up one of their impressively generous and patron-awe-inspiring salads for lunch.  

12:10 p.m. — I return to the "liberry" and begin eating my impressive and tasty salad.  

12:18 p.m. — Mr. Little Stupid arrives for a computer.  

12:28 p.m. — I finish my salad and go brush my teeth again. Eww, salad breath.  

12:34 p.m. — I receive a phone call from one of the New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids. I think it's Delbert. He inquires as to whether or not he will be allowed to use a computer should he turn up at the library. It's our policy, you see, that school-aged children of appropriate computer-usage age, even equipped with a permission slip on file, are not allowed to use a computer during school hours, unless they are home school students doing genuine research. According to Delbert, though, he is being schooled in an alternative school, which means he's gotten in trouble at regular school and has been sent there for reform. The alternative school doesn't meet until after 4, so he thinks this is a loophole. I bring it up to Mrs. A and C and they say he can only use a computer during normal school hours if he has a signed letter from his alternative school teacher saying he can, and then can only use it for genuine research. He can't come in and surf MySpace. I gleefully inform him of this.  

12:40 p.m. — Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch arrives for computer time. He brings his mommy with him, who I believe he still lives with and is likely his only means of transportation. What a colossal loser. 

12: 42 p.m. — The rest of the staff leave for lunch. It is Mrs. J's birthday and they're taking her to Crapplebees. Wow, and I thought we liked Mrs. J.  

12:57 p.m. — Jimmy and mommy leave.  

1:00 p.m. — I get a few minutes of peace and begin typing this up in hopes of putting some of it up on the blog early. 

1:04 p.m. — Sudden rush on computers, including a usually clueless wireless guy who will no doubt have trouble logging on and then have to get me to help him.  

1:10 p.m. — Our first "What are your hours?" call of the day. 

1:13 p.m.— Mr. Little stupid approaches the desk and asks me how to spell the word "talk." I tell him.  

1:15 p.m.— Lennie arrives for his Thursday shift. He complains that "it's so hot you can't stand it." He notices me typing and becomes very interested. I stop. 

1:30 p.m.— An old man with a long silver beard arrives saying he has 25 boxes of book donations for us, where do we want them? Since we aren't busy at all, I tell him to drive around to our storage area (i.e. the basement) and I'll come out and help him haul them in.  

1:31 p.m. — There's a sudden rush on the desk, with checkouts and reference questions. The phone also starts ringing with people calling for Mrs. C. I'm the only one on staff, except for Lennie and now can't leave the desk to go help this old man haul boxes. Instead, I send Lennie out and tell him to go unlock the basement and help haul boxes. He leaves.  

1:38 p.m.— The patron tide stemmed, I dash out to the basement door. The old man has two other slightly younger men helping him haul boxes out of a truck and into the basement. Lennie is standing there idly, saying that he'll lock the door back when they finish. I tell him that he's supposed to be helping them, but he doesn't move. One of the old men tells me that they have quite a few more boxes of books they wish to donate. I tell him he'd better give us a few days to get things sorted and cleared out to the BIGGER storage area, before bringing in any more. Mrs. B, our resident donation sorter and reboxer, is going to faint when she sees all these boxes. She only just yesterday got the basement and current crop of book donations sorted and sent off to our larger storage area, off property.  

1:40 p.m.— I dash back inside where a patron is waiting. 

 1:56 p.m. — Lennie won't quit snooping whenever I try to continue typing this up. I don't know how much he's capable of reading, but I learned long ago not to underestimate him. He seems to sense that I'm doing something of interest, though, and keeps asking me questions, like "Who are you writing a letter to?" "Myself," I tell him. I switch from the screen to a scrap of paper, but he's even now trying to get a gander of this very note.  

2:00 p.m. — The rest of the staff returns from lunch.  

2:07 p.m.— I ask Mrs. C and Mrs. B why my book in the mysteries was flagged as misshelved. They say they weren't the ones who flagged it, though. Must be a dumbass newbie greenhorn who did it as some sort of half-assed revenge for my flagging all their misshelved books over the past few months. They can't even get that right.  

2:12 p.m.— I leave for an extended break. Mrs. C tells me I can take more than an hour, as I'm the poor soul on til closing.  

3:30 p.m.— I return. Mrs. C says that drama has occurred in my absence. She says an older lady phoned and asked Mrs. B if there was a man here delivering books to be donated. When told that there had been some men delivering books earlier, who were now gone, the lady said she wanted to leave a message for the man that he needed to phone home. Then the lady burst into tears and hung up. No idea what that was all about. The other news, though, is that the old guys who donated the books took all the empty boxes we'd been saving to sort donated books into. Mrs. B had been begging for some for a week and now they were gone. Lennie told Mrs. C that the men asked him if they could take the boxes but he didn't answer them, so they took them anyway. We'll get them back, most likely in a few days when they bring more books. 

3:45 p.m.— I see that Delbert, the aforementioned Neighborhood Auxiliary League Member, is now using a computer. It's after school hours are over, so there's no rule against it. However, he's been on for over half an hour now and I have to bust him off for another patron. Mr. Little Stupid is still around too, but had, apparently been busted off before because he's now on a different computer than when I left. When I go to reboot Delbert's station, Mr. Little Stupid asks me how to spell "work."  

3:59 p.m.— Fatty Manchild arrives for a computer. He's not wearing jams, per se, but he is wearing shorts. They look to be of the no-print, off-white, board-short variety.  

4:06 p.m.— Mr. Little Stupid finally leaves.  

4:18 p.m.— A woman and three children, each of whom is whining for books, approaches the desk. I hear her tell them that they can't have any books from our library because they have their own library at school to borrow from. They persist. She tells them that kids aren't allowed to have library cards at our library. Never mind the fact that they just exited the CHILDREN'S room, this is what she says. I suspect she's lying to them to get them to quit whining. They continue. She spies me and says, "Kids can't get library cards here, can they?" Her "can they?" seems loaded with intent. "Um... I guess that all depends on what answer you're looking for," I tell her. "The truth," she says. "Okay. Sure, kids can get library cards here." This is not what the woman (their baby-sitter, I think) wants to hear, because she immediately tells the kids that she didn't trust them to check books out on her card since they'd lost so many from school. "But I only lost one, this year," one of the kids says. I gamely try to back her up a bit by telling them that we're really serious about getting our books back and will send our enforcer, Mrs. J, to come get them. They leave with only the sitter's books.  

4:30 p.m.— Yay! I get to make a trip to the post office. People hate us at the post office. Not the postal workers themselves, who seem incapable of caring how many packages we have to mail each week; it's the other customers who hate us for clogging up the lines for 10 minutes at a stretch. I feel their pain. Fortunately, we only have one box and an envelope to mail and I get them sent off without incident.  

4:47 p.m.— I return to find that someone has had a blowout in the public restroom while I was gone and the whole reference hall is super butt-fume stinky.  

5:05 p.m.— Everyone else on staff leaves for the day.  

6:00 p.m.— Been pretty slow going. I've called all my holds and had time to type a bit.  

6:01 p.m.— A patron brings in a book for return. He looks ever so slightly miffed that he actually had to come in the building to do this, as the book return stays locked during hours we're open. 

6:05 p.m.— Wow, an honest to God reference question! A lady wanted organizational information about the W0rld Hea1th Organizati0n and the Pan Amer!can Hea1th Organizati0n. We have no books specifically on them but EBSC0 had loads of articles, two of which seemed to suit her criteria. I print them for her. She writes us a check for a whole dollar. 

6:18 p.m.— A little kid—who's here with his mom and is maybe 7 years of age, if that—comes up to the desk to tell me about how much he likes Shrek and Shrek II and Shrek the Third, even though he's not seen it. He has matching fake tribal tatoos extending from beneath his short sleeved shirt down his arms nearly to his wrists. At least, I hope they're fake; his mom is sporting a few real tattoos. 

6:24 p.m.— Some child is screaming outside. It's that sort of high-pitched, make a dog's ears bleed and your spine seize up sort of squeal that should be reserved only for occasions when murder is about to be committed, but whatever kid it is seems to be flinging it around the neighborhood pretty liberally. It's not a cry of distress. Most likely it's more a scream meaning: "It's raining and I'm getting wet!" 

6:45 p.m.— Closing duties begin in earnest.  

6:47 p.m. — the Purple Nun's brother arrives, but leaves within a few minutes. 

6:55 p.m.— And I am alone and nearly finished for the day. 

6:56 p.m.— Some goofa pulls up outside, no doubt with 400 books to return. 

6:56 p.m.— False alarm. They were just parking here to walk downtown. 

7:00 p.m. — We are officially closed.

The Founding Fathers Return to Plague Us Some More

Our “employee” Lennie has shifts on Monday and Thursday afternoons. I’m usually gone by the time he arrives on Thursdays, but toward the end of my shift he came in a bit early. After some small talk, Lennie held up a small pamphlet.

“Some guy gave me this,” he said. “He’s giving them to everyone.”

I took a look at it and saw that it was a gospel tract, the kind given out by door to door missionaries or left tacked to the bulletin board at Wal-Mart.

Within a few minutes, the front door opened and an older man entered carrying a thick manila folder. He wore the largest pair of wrap-around blue-blocker sunglasses I’ve ever seen. I didn’t recognize him, but he recognized me.

“Hi, there. Brian, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“You’re not Brian?”

“I’m not Brian.”

“Is there a Brian here?”

“There’s no Brian here.”

“Huh. But I’ve met you before,” he said. “At least, I recognize you from somewhere. What’s your name?”

I told him my name.

“I’m pretty sure I know you from here,” he said. “I think you helped me out by typing up some documents once.”

I have never in my life typed up documents for a patron, so I was pretty sure he didn’t know me at all.

“Yes!” he then exclaimed. “You typed up the Declaration of Independence and Constitution for me a while back.”

Recognition sucker-punched me and I realized the man’s identity: he was Grandpa Sam, the elderly gentleman who, back in the summer 2005, plagued not only my “liberry” but several libraries in two counties, by phoning them up and asking for copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. All of the libraries had the documents and offered to produce copies of them for him, but ours was the only one he actually showed up at to check in person. We’d provided him with copies of those documents and I had been the one to print them for him from the internet, taking time to adjust the text and repaginate them myself so that they would fit comfortably in around 25 pages so he wouldn’t have to pay a lot for them. And after walking from our building with those documents in his hand, he turned around and phoned up some senator in Arkansas and made the false claim that we’d refused to give them to him. Yes, this was the same Grandpa Sam who had showered us and all our patrons with gospel tracts back then, proclaiming himself an associate pastor at a local church—a church I phoned after we later learned of his deception to make sure their real minister knew the full story before Grandpa Sam had a chance to spread false rumors to their congregation. The pastor had then told me that Grandpa Sam was sadly suffering from Alzheimer’s and had likely done what he had in some sort of delusional state.

For an Alzheimer’s sufferer, he certainly was doing better job in the memory department than I was. I would never have recognized him, for Grandpa Sam looked quite a bit thinner than during his previous visit.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Now I remember.”

Grandpa Sam then brandished his manila envelope at me. He explained that since we’d been so kind as to type of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for him, two years back, he had another typing job he wanted us to do for him. He then told me that he’d been doing a lot of writing recently and had composed something of a memoir of inspirational stories from his life, in long hand, and was hoping to have the whole thing typed up.

“I’d pay for it, of course,” Grandpa Sam said.

Sensing the danger of the situation, I quickly explained that we hadn’t actually typed anything for him when he last visited. We’d only printed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from the internet. We didn’t type them up ourselves. Furthermore, typing documents for patrons was not a service that we offered at the library. We offered computers on which people were welcome to type documents, but we ourselves did not type them for patrons.

"But, I’d pay you for it,” Grandpa Sam reiterated.

“I understand, but this is simply not a service we offer.”

Grandpa Sam didn’t seem very happy about this. It seemed to him that if he brought something to us to be typed and offered to pay, we should type it. I told him he was welcome to speak with our library director, but she was out at lunch that moment. He didn’t press the issue further. Instead, he asked where we kept our exercise books. He said he’d been sick for the past few months and had lost a lot of muscle mass that he was looking to get back. I wrote down the call number for him and directed him toward nonfiction. He passed out a gospel tract to a nearby patron, gave one to me, and off he went.

Normally, I might consider doing a bit of typing for cash, particularly for an elderly patron who clearly didn’t have the skills to do it himself. However, for this particular elderly patron, I was not having any of it. Anyone who phones around to all the area libraries, demands copies of historical documents, is given them and then phones up some senator’s office, in a seemingly random state, and then lies and says we refused to give him the documents, even if only doing so under a delusion, is not someone I’m interested in doing business with.

You open a mere hour and a half late and they never let you hear the end of it! Shiiiii

None of the staff was upset that I neglected to open the library on time, Monday. The patrons, however, haven't stopped talking about it.

When I arrived, yesterday, Mrs. C said that people had been coming in all morning long and mentioning how we were not open immediately at 1 on Monday. Mr. B-Natural came in a couple of times to bring it up again. And people who hadn't even attempted to come to the library during its unfortunate extended closed hours dropped by to mention it, having heard about it from the mouth of Lennie, who has apparently told every single person he's encountered since that we didn't open on time and that he "did good" in tracking down Mr. A to let him know. (No one has yet been able to figure out how Lennie knew where Mr. A works, nor where exactly in the building his office is located, but find it he did.)

With my luck, Mr. Crab was probably one of the folks who turned up at 1 and this little hour and a half incident will become transformed by Mr. Crab's legend-spinning abilities into The Week and a Half the library failed to open.

Monday Attack!

So there I was, enjoying my Monday off, when round about 2:20 my phone rang. It was Mr. Piano, a recently added member of our "liberry" board of directors.

"Hey, JUICE, is the library open today?"

"Yeah, it should be--" I began. Then a horrible thought passed through my skull. I dashed to my fridge, where my brand new April work schedule was attached with a magnet. Sure enough, my horrible thought was made real. "Aw crap," I said. "I'm supposed to be there."

Mr. Piano wasn't calling to bless me out, or anything. He'd simply dropped by to pick up something board-related and found the place locked up. I told him I'd be there in 20 minutes and made a break for the car.

As I've detailed here many times, Mondays are evil evil things at the "liberry." We're only open from 1 to 5, but this time limitation does not limit the amount of chaos we experience. Instead, it compresses the amount of chaos we experience on a normal 10 hour day into a four hour block. And while we went through a rather enjoyable year or two of having two employees scheduled to work on Mondays, thus having enough staff on hand to help stave off the Monday Madness, traditionally and currently it's been a solo effort.

For years, Mrs. C used to do them by herself. Then, after I had to fill in for her one too many times nearly being driven insane by the process, I successfully lobbied for double employees and was given the job of being Mrs. C's Monday wingman. After Mrs. C took maternity leave the day fell to me and a revolving cast of corhorts and greenhorns. Upon her return, Mrs. C realized how much more enjoyable life is without Monday shifts in her life, and stopped doing them altogether. Then Mrs. A decided she couldn't justify having two employees on a day with such low circulation numbers and for the past several months it's been a revolving solo shift, with each "liberry" ass. taking one Monday per month. Well, I say "solo shift," but Lennie, our mentally slow volunteer "employee," works them too.

As I was nearing the library, fully expecting to find 20 innanet crowders lined up at the door, feet a-tappin', I spotted Lennie standing on the corner and looking very concerned. I imagined that he had probably been confused to show up for his Monday shift only to find the place locked up. There were no patrons banging on the door to get in, but there were quite a number of boxes of book donations. (We always tell people not to bring book donations on Mondays because we don't have the staff on hand to deal with them. What day of the week do you think we get the most? You guessed it!)

At 2:34, I unlocked the back door and then broke a speed record for opening duties, before actually unlocking the front door. Lennie was the first in. He didn't mention anything about the "liberry" being closed earlier, preferring to default to his usual conversational topic of the latest basketball scores for WVU. He helped me carry in all the dontations.

I tried to phone Mrs A at home, to let her know what had happened, but got no answer. After a few minutes, though, Mr. A phoned and he seemed relieved to hear someone answer. He said Lennie had walked down to his office to let him know that the library wasn't open, but he figured he'd call first before phoning Mrs. A at home.

"Well, we weren't open on time," I admitted. "In fact, I was trying to phone MRS. A to let her know, but didn't get an answer."

I thought telling Mr. A about the situation was remarkably good thinking on Lennie's part. I told him so, giving him a new conversational topic of the day: "I did good, didn't I, JUICE?"

The only patron who said anything about our odd hours was Mr. B-Natural, who'd probably been lined up at the door at 12:45, hoping to get the first computer of the day.

"Somebody sleep late today?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Somebody forgot to look at his schedule."

Around 3:30, Mrs. A finally phoned. She too seemed thankful to hear my voice and wondered how I found out the library was closed. I told her the story of Mr. Piano's call and of Lennie's attempt to save the day.

"It was MS. S's day, right?" she said.

"No, it was my day."

"No, it's MS. S's day," Mrs. A said.

"No, it's mine. I'm looking at the schedule right now and it says me, 1-5." I then paused as a warm thought passed through my skull. "You know, I should have just kept quiet about that and we could finally have been rid of her."

"Dammit, JUICE, why'd you have to say anything?!" Mrs. A said.

Lennie `n' Me

I wasn't completely solo yesterday. Lennie, our mentally handicapped Monday/Thursday volunteer came in for his shift at 1. Mostly when Lennie is in, he's there to talk to Mrs. C, who he's known forever. He talks to me too, but mostly to repeat his theme of the day or to latch on to something I've said that connects to something he's heard of. When I'm there solo, like yesterday, there's not as much communication. This is probably my fault, as I don't have all that much to say to Lennie beyond the usual small talk. He's not one for in-depth conversation and tends to return to such topics as N ascar, West Virginia college sports, how cold it is, or to whatever his theme for the day is.

Mostly, Lennie tries to be helpful, or at least look helpful. He straightens books and carries non-fiction upstairs to put on the cart. Sometimes he disappears upstairs for a whole half hour, where I'm sure he's doing more shelf-straightening. And since Mrs. C wasn't there to tell him not to, he used her computer to surf the web, look at pictures on _Yah oo_ and watch clips from the new _Sylves ter Stal lone_ reality show. That was fine by me, if it gave him something to do. Otherwise, he wanted to come over and keep resetting my computer timers.

We keep three kitchen timers set up at the circ-desk to time how long each computer patron has been on their computer. We give them a half hour and after that we don't run them off unless someone is waiting. The timers count down from 30 minutes and then I set them to 01, 02, or 03 seconds to indicate the order in which potentially bumpable patrons should be bumped. Lennie doesn't get that. He just sees stalled timers that need to be reset to 30 minutes and makes it his job to reset them. He won't mess with timers that are counting down, but if the little : isn't blinking, they're his to reset. So throughout Lennie's time there, I had to keep resetting his resets in order to make sure I was busting off the right patron when it came time to do so.

I tried explaining my system to him and he would nod as though he understood. This would only last for about a minute and he would go and reset the timers again.

At one point, a college-aged girl came in to use a computer. Lennie, who had been keeping vigil over the timers, wanted me to know which one was available. I thanked him and told the girl which one to use. She wasn't even out of the room yet before Lennie piped up with, "She's a good lookin' one, ain't she, JUICE?"

I don't know if she heard, cause I didn't make eye contact with her. I can't see how she didn't, though. All I could think to do was agree with him in the hope he wouldn't keep repeating his question until he got an answer, and saying, "Yes" was the safest response I could think of.

As in accordance with tradition

The past few Mondays have been fairly tame as far as Mondays go. The traffic has seemed lighter than usual, but then even the heavy traffic and phones have not been as bad since both Mrs. C and I have been working the desk. I can still tell when things would be unbearable were I there solo, but it's been far easier with another person there.

Yesterday, however, Mrs. C and Mrs. A were both out of town at meetings, so I really was running solo. Well, I say solo, but Lennie had come in for his Monday shift, so he was there to help load the book cart. Otherwise, it was just me staring in the face of one of the most irritating Mondays in recent memory.

Starting at about 1:10, the patrons began pouring in. And not just regular patrons, but needy patrons.

Our first two patrons through the door needed a beginner's guide to Buddhism. No big deal, except they didn't want the closest thing we had to one and stood there trying to make suggestions to me for other searches. One of them also seemed to think that we had a book on hold for her, though she admitted that we had not actually called her about it. She just assumed it would be there. It wasn't, but I still had to look around for a minute to make sure. The other lady needed a library card, even though she wasn't going to check out the Buddhism book we have after all. Again, no problem, but she couldn't decide whether she wanted a key card or a wallet card and kept saying things like, "Well, I'll take the key card for now" as though we're real keen on people switching down the road. Her friend kept trying to explain that she needed to choose the kind she really wanted NOW. Meanwhile, four other equally needy patrons had piled up behind them as their time at the desk stretched on into the five minute range.

After they left, and I was at last able to start dealing with the other patrons in line, the phone began ringing.

The first call was from Town-M's librarian, Mr. T, who phoned to tell us that he wanted to send us a few ILL books that some pitiful foolish patrons of ours had requested, but somehow our library's patron record had vanished from the database. I looked. It was indeed missing. He noted that several of his patrons' records had vanished over the weekend too, so perhaps we'd done so as well. I tried to explain to Mr. T that I couldn't do a whole lot about this as both librarians are out of town and I have no way to contact them nor any idea who to call about this sort of thing. The most I could do is make a new card for the library so he could check things out to it.

I located books for the next two patrons in line, but both of them needed library cards and more patrons were filing in behind them and the phone rang.

ARGH!!

This call was, of course, from Mr. Kreskin, who'd called to talk to Mrs. A who is rarely at the library on most Mondays, let alone on this Monday when she’d announced to one and all she and Mrs. C would be out of town.  Hence his call.  Fortunately, he didn't get upset that both she and Mrs. C were gone. He just said he'd call back tomorrow.

A lady patron in line came up and said, "I was just down at H&R Block and they said you'd do my taxes."

"No, ma'am," I said, rather emphatically. "We do NOT do that here."

She looked shocked and offended at this. But I told her that I'd heard, though could not swear to be true, that Town-C's library has someone that helps with taxes by appointment. She seemed distraught over this, but mostly because she didn't know where Town-C's library was. I told her and sent her on her way.

*PHONE RINGS*

It was from Mrs. H over at Town-D's library. She had a patron who was looking for books on New Jersey and she wanted to send them over to check out the two we owned but she had no way of knowing for sure that those books were actually on the shelf despite the fact that the catalog claimed they were both available. Could I go check?

"I might be able to check in a while," I said, "but right now it's Monday." Mrs. H said she understood and they were pretty swamped too.

Then Mrs. C phoned. She needed me to fire up her new computer and activate the remote access program so one of the tech guys could load programs on it. I groaned at this, staring at a sea of impatient looking patrons. "I'll try to get over there and do it in the next few minutes. I'm eat up here at the moment." Once I was able to get to it, I had to keep going back and doing it over again because her screensaver kept kicking them out.

After about an hour things began to calm down and then turned into intermittent bursts of chaos throughout the afternoon and on past closing. It took me more than an hour to get the book return cleaned out and all the books from it shelved. Every time I would try to check any in or put any on the shelf, the phone would ring and I'd have to stop.

Finally, it was nearly closing time.  And that's when the real rush began.

After damn near a decade and a half of closing at 5p on Mondays, many of our patrons have finally realized that this is when we close.  However, this doesn't keep them from coming to the library at the crack of 5p by any means. No. Patrons now view the 5 p.m. deadline as the time by which they need to be through the library's door. And once they've rushed across town and passed through it, they become quite leisurely in their book searching activity.  Such as the mom and her three kids, who came in and began slowly browsing the children's room at 4:55.  At 2 minutes til close, I let them know that, while I wasn't trying to rush them (liar!), we were closing in a couple of minutes. Didn't phase `em one bit. They leafed and looked until well past 5 p.m. and finally came to check out at nearly 5 minutes after 5.

"The name's Holland," the mom said. This told me that mom didn't have a new library card and had not been in since before the summer and was assuming we could still look up her record by her name. I asked her name and confirmed that we didn't have a card for her. I offered to make her a new card and she even began filling out an application before deciding she really didn't want the hassle.

"Well, the kids are probably in there," she said with a dismissive wave toward the computer. "The name's Holland."

"Did you bring your cards?" I asked the kids. Nope, they hadn't.

"So you're trying to say we can't have any books today?" mom said, adopting just a little more attitude than I appreciated.

"No, ma'am. You can still have books, but it will need to be on your new card."

Mom sighed and finished filling it out. By the time I'd finished checking them out it was nearly 13 minutes after closing.

So, yes, it was another traditional infuriating Monday. I did not allow it to infuriate me, however, for I was still living off the glow of the great news my wife and I received regarding where we're going to be spending the next three years of our lives.

(To be continued...)

Anudda Munday

Christmas vacation went well, even if it was pretty short.

I left my in-law's place in North Carolina this morning around 8:45 and hit the road for home. My wife is staying behind to visit with her peeps for a few more days while I have to return to West Virginia. Mrs. B is still out following her surgery and also managed to develop pneumonia, so she wasn't able to return last week as she'd planned so I get another week of near constant fill-in. Like I told my boss when she broke that bad news to me, though, "It's not like I don't want the money." Mrs. A also wanted me to come back today to help Mrs. C on her Monday shift since our records from last year indicated a horrific amount of patron traffic (which is to say, a usual Monday) on the corresponding day.

So I hauled my tail over several mountains in order to get home by the time the library opened at 1 p. I almost made it on time too, but I stopped along the way to shop for shoes.

For the record: there is no place in the Tri-Metro area where a person can buy a decent pair of athletic shoes that don't look like they fell out of a clown's ass.

"Hey, Spanky, how bout slappin' a pair of Reebok Highposts or just about anything by Dada, on your tired old dogs. It's like the `70's, but for your feet!"

Who buys such hideous footwear? All I want is plain white athletic shoes with a minimum of logos and other such gaudy shit on them! Is that too much to ask?!! Well in Tri-Metro, yes, it is.  In other towns, however, not so much. I was able to find a nice pair of plain white Skechers which were, as an added bonus, on sale. The delay for shopping, plus about a dozen slow-ass people on the two lane highway I chose to take back, put me around 4 minutes past 1 p.m. getting to work.

I cruised through downtown Town-A, passing Mr. B-Natual and Bubba on the way, parked in front of the "liberry" and walked through the door into the usual Monday madness. Mrs. C was there, womanning the desk solo. Well, not entirely solo. She did have Lennie there, who was on his regular Monday shift and was shelving videos as I walked in.

As she told me later, once things had calmed down a bit, she had already emptied the book return THREE times that morning before even opening for business. Then, at 1, there were people pounding on the door to get in, three of which hauled ass for the computer sign in sheet and then descended on the computers to get their raging "3 whole days without the innanet DT's" fix going. They were so quick that they completely left Mr. B-Natural in their signup sheet dust and he was unwilling to wait around for a computer to free up, hence why I saw him driving away.

The rest of the day was very busy, but it's a tolerable thing when you have two people on the job. I've told Mrs. A repeatedly that we need a second person on shift on Mondays instead of just leaving Mrs. C at the mercy of it's chaos. She's even suggested it to Mrs. C, but her point is that Mondays are hot and cold--it's full on busy one minute then nothing for upwards of an hour at a time, then another inexplicable burst and then more nothing. It's hard to justify having someone else in if they're just going to have to sit around and pick their nose.

I wouldn't mind getting paid to pick my nose. Back when I worked for Onstar, I once got paid time and a half to guard ice-cream and read a Neil Gaiman book. That's right. I was already working overtime one weekend, things were slow, the company needed someone from my department to go sit in the break room and guard the free ice-cream they were giving to employees, I told them, "I'm your man. I'd love to be paid time and a half to watch cream." I'd be up for such lunacy again.

Carbonated Deception

Our mentally slow honorary "liberry" employee Lennie was in today. I haven't seen him in a while because by the time I normally arrive at work on Thursdays he's already finished his shift with us and left or has overstayed his shift and is in the process of being convinced to leave.

This week, however, I was in a couple of hours earlier than usual, as I'm working more hours to help fill in for Mrs. B, who's still out recovering from surgery. (Frankly I think she's faking the whole thing to get out of work. Last year she had to take December off because she "broke her ankle" and had to go "recover." Uh huh. This year's flimsy excuse is that she's "had a hysterectomy." Suuuuure she did. Glug glug glug glug.) So today I was around for all of Lennie's Thursday shift.

Lennie was his usual self, which is to say on a fairly narrow track. During any given appearance, he will have a conversational theme for the day and today's Lennie Theme was the fact that he was going to go Christmas caroling at a local retirement home. Whenever there was a lull in employee conversation, Lennie would pipe up with, "MRS. C, I'm going singing toniiiight... It's at THE OLD FOLKS HOME."

Mrs. C told him he needed to be sure to thank Mrs. J for buying him a soft-drink down at the corner market yesterday. Mrs. J had told us that she'd seen him in there and had offered to buy him a hot dog if he wanted one. He seemed interested in the offer at first, but then remembered that he already had money for a hot dog. He said he would like a drink, though, so Mrs. J had bought him a Coke.

"She was going to buy me a hot dog," Lennie said as the tale was repeated.

"Uh huh," Mrs. C said with suspicion. "You weren't going to let her do that, knowing you already had money in your pocket for a hot dog, were you?"

"I had money for a hot dog. Gary gave me chaaange," Lennie said, but he avoided Mrs. C's gaze and quickly tried to change the subject, indicating that he didn't like the avenue of discourse in which he might or might not have been planning to get a free hot dog on top of the money he already had for one. Mrs. C's suspicious nature on this may seem a bit cold, but you really have to watch Lennie when it comes to matters of food and money.

Sometimes Mrs. A sends Lennie on an errand down to the market to pick her up a drink. She gives him the money and he's supposed to buy it and bring her her change. Occasionally, she'll give him enough for him to get a drink too and tells him to do so. Well, a year or so ago, Lennie was about to run such an errand and asked Mrs. A if he could get a drink as well. She said, sure thing, and gave him extra money for it. Then, Lennie slyly went over to Mrs. B and asked to speak to her outside. Away from prying ears, he asked her if she could give him some money so he could get a drink. She did. He then proceeded to pull the same trick with Mrs. C and Mrs. J without any of the ladies catching on. (He might have tried it with me, but I wasn't there that day.) Lennie then took his ill-gotten funds and purchased himself quite the little feast, including a drink, a hot dog, an ice-cream cone and some candy. Of course, he brought all of it back up to the library, along with Mrs. A's original drink and no change, then proceeded to eat it all in front of them. When the ladies saw this, they realized they had been scammed. And by Lennie of all people. They acted very angry with him, but secretly we all thought it was pretty funny, particularly since we had no clue Lennie was capable of such deception.

Lennie doesn't try that sort of thing very often, but he was up to such tricks again today. After helping us lick all the fund-drive envelopes (during which we all got papercuts on our tongues) Mrs. A sent him to the store with more money than necessary for a drink but also with instructions that he was to bring her change. He did bring her change, but it only amounted to a quarter or so because he'd spent the rest of it on a drink for himself, sans permission. Mrs. A laughed this off, but Mrs. C told Lennie he had to pay Mrs. A back when he comes in for his shift on Monday. He frowned and avoided her eyes and kept trying to change the subject back to his caroling tonight.

When Lennie's three hour shift ended, he was, as usual, reluctant to leave. Mrs. C kept hounding him to pick out the books he wanted because it was time to go, but he was very slow about it. And even after he picked them out he took forever to get the rest of his stuff together to leave. And after he'd finally put on his coat and his hat and put his books in his backpack and called his grandma to let her know he was about to start walking home, he still lingered in the door staring out at the rain. He had an umbrella, but still didn't like going out in the weather. He talked to us about having to sing some more.

"We don't have The Village People's Greatest Hits over there, do we?" I asked, pointing to our recording-industry-lawsuit-settlement CD section. As I've written before, singing "YMCA" is the only sure fire way to get Lennie to leave.

"Nope, but we can start up a chorus any time," Mrs. C said.

We didn't have to, though. Lennie decided on his own that he was ready to go. He snugged up his jacket good then reached into its pocket and produced from it a can of soda of the very brand he'd purchased earlier, though this one had been brought from home. Mrs. C saw it and began to protest that he'd had a drink the whole time yet still thought it necessary to misappropriate Mrs. A's funds for another one. She'd hardly begun, though, when Lennie said, "Wish me luck singing" and out the door he went.

Of Mice and Mentality

One of our unchronicled library regulars is a guy I'm going to call Lennie. I've not written about Lennie before because there hasn't been much to write about on the subject since this blog started last November. But he is a topic that should be addressed as he's something of an honorary "liberry" staff member.

Lennie's a mentally-challenged fellow in his mid-30s, who's tall, well-built and pretty much a perfect match for his literary namesake. To look at him, you might not even know there was anything amiss. He also reminds me a lot of Forest Gump--not the Tom Hanks Forest Gump, but rather the Gump of the original Winston Groom book who was supposed to be a really big guy whose brain just ran on a different track than most folks. That's pretty much Lennie for you. However, an even better way to describe him is how the mentally unbalanced character of Arnold Wiggins is described by his social worker Jack in the play The Boys Next Door. To paraphrase: Lennie can fool you sometimes, but his deck has no face cards.

Lennie's been a weekly fixture at the "liberry" for a number of years. He's old friends with Mrs. C, from back in their highschool days and he enjoys coming by and hanging out. In fact, he would be willing to come by and hang out every day for several hours at a stretch if we'd let him get away with it.

As far as I can tell, Lennie's ability to create and convey thoughts of his own is pretty limited. He tends to function better as a parrot of what he hears other people say. This isn't to suggest you can't carry on a conversation with him, which you can, but in conversational lulls he tends to return to whatever his theme for the day is, usually some bit of news he's picked up at one of the other businesses he hangs out in or at his grandmother's house, where he lives. If left to replay this theme, he'll play it all day and talk your ear off. We've learned that Lennie must therefore be kept busy when he's in house and must not be allowed to remain in house past his expiration point, (which is the point at which we want to say, "Take off your hat, Lennie. The air feels fine.... Now, just think of the rabbits and don't turn around...").

Before I began working at the "liberry," the staff used to have a regular problem with Lennie overstaying his welcome. After he'd been in for several hours with no sign of leaving, the staff would tell him it was time to go home and he would steadfastly ignore them. Mrs. C is just about the only person he'll pay any attention to in such circumstances, but if she wasn't on hand all bets were off as to when Lennie would leave.

Around this time, word filtered up to the library that Lennie had finally worn out his welcome at one of the barbershops downtown for refusing to leave. The barber had even gone so far as to call the police on Lennie--not that Lennie was doing anything that required police intervention, but the barber just wanted them to scare him a bit. Well, scare him they did. Badly. I'm sure they didn't mean to traumatize him, but for a guy of Lennie's mentality being put in the back of a squad car and then told it was because he stayed at the barbershop all day is very traumatic. Lennie cried and cried and avoided the barbershop for months for fear of being hauled off to jail. Instead, he began spending twice as much time at the library, which was not great either. Something needed to be done, so Mrs. C developed a plan...
Mrs. C's solution to our Lennie-Never-Leaves problem was to hire Lennie as a volunteer worker and make up a schedule for him where he could come in twice a week to help out for an hour or two at a time. And when Lennie's scheduled time was up, he had to leave with no argument. This was a stroke of creativity that continues to serve us well today. Mrs. C even negotiated a deal with the barber-shop in which they would be added to Lennie's schedule, permitting him to go back and regularly visit once again. (Although, we've noticed that Lennie has kept his hair military short since then, so we think perhaps he parleys his role as a customer into extra visits with them.) Several other area businesses have been added to Lennie's schedule and now every month Mrs. C prints him several new copies to take around to his hangouts. She even lightly chastises Lennie on the days when he fails to show up for his scheduled volunteer time at the library, just to keep him in good practice.

During his "work" days, Lennie helps out by shelving books in the children's room. These mostly go in the Easy Reader section, where it isn't important where in each letter section a book goes provided it goes in the right section for the first letter of the author's name. However, I've learned not to underestimate his ability in this department. I discovered one day that he is quite capable of shelving books in the Juvenile and Adult sections where a more precise alphabetizing system is used. Sure, he doesn't get them all absolutely correct and you do kind of have to go behind him and make sure they're placed properly, but his ratio of correct to incorrect shelvings is definitely skewed toward correct.

Lennie's also in charge of hauling non-fiction books upstairs on his workdays. Sometimes, if we don't pay close attention, he stays upstairs and attempts to help patrons find books. Often, the patrons are completely unaware of Lennie's limited capabilities ("he can fool you sometimes") and gladly accept his help. He then leads them on a merry romp around the library, going from shelf to shelf, stopping at each and peering thoughtfully at the spine-labels before moving on to another across the room. After a while, the "helped" patrons usually filter down to the circulation desk to say, "That guy you have working up there doesn't have any idea where anything is."

Lennie has also caused occasional trouble for us when he's not even in the library.

One day I got a call from a patron who explained that she doesn't see very well and that she wanted us to print out a list of all of our books on tape for her so she could go over it with a magnifying glass and pick out books she'd like to hear. I would have loved to print such a list for her, but our current computer cataloging system, VTLS, is royally incapable of such a feat. I explained this to the lady on the phone. She got mad at me and claimed she'd spoken with someone who worked at the library who assured her we could print her out a book on tape list. I told her that I'd never heard of such a thing being possible for us, but invited her to call back when a librarian was on hand to find out for sure.

"Well, I suppose I'm just going to have to come down there and make your computer print one out myself!" she said.

"You're welcome to try that too, ma'am," I told her.

Then she got another idea. "I think I'll just send Lennie down there. He said he can make it print."

"Excuse me, but who did you say you'd send?" I asked. I'd heard what she said, but I just couldn't believe it.

"Lennie," she said.

"Lennie?"

"Yes, Lennie. He works there! He's my neighbor."

"Yes, ma'am, I know who he is, but I assure you that if anyone DOES know how to print out such a list, it's NOT Lennie."

Evidently, Lennie's face-card lacking deck was able to fool her just fine.

Occasionally, we do still have trouble getting Lennie to leave, particularly when Mrs. C isn't around. However, we have since developed a solution to this problem that doesn't involve calling the police on him...
Sometime in the past few years, it was discovered that Lennie has an intense aversion to the song "YMCA" by the Village People. Our theory is that he was once forced to dance to it at a wedding reception. (How exactly we know it was at a wedding reception and not, say, a high school dance, is apocryphal knowledge at this point. It may have once been known for certain, but memories are becoming more and more like Lennie's as the liberry staff ages.) The upshot of this is, when Lennie doesn't want to leave, all we have to do is start singing "Young man, there's no need to feel down... I said, YOUNG man..." or even just raise our hands to form the Y and suddenly Lennie can't gather up his stuff to leave fast enough. It's amazing to watch. You've never seen books get checked out with such speed.

However, such a degree of magic button control over another human being is kind of scary, really. And with the whole "With great power coming great responsibility" thing, and all, we realize this is not the sort of power to be abused. We only use it when all other avenues have been exhausted. But on the rare occasions when we do, it's pretty damn funny.

Mostly, we really do like having Lennie around, but usually in regulated doses. We have been known, though, to make exceptions.

Last year Lennie's father died of a heart attack. While Lennie didn't live with his dad, they were pretty close and Lennie admired his father more than anyone. He was understandably shaken by his father's death. We wanted him to feel like he had people to turn to if he needed to talk so we decided that Lennie could stay at the library as long as he wanted to. It took a while before Lennie was back to his old self. His daily theme-topic stayed on the loss of his father for weeks. He was apt to go up to perfect strangers in the library and blurt out, "My daddy died. I'm sad." Or, he would repeat much of the warm words of comfort other people had told him about his father. "It's gonna be a rough time for a while," he would say. "Gonna be a rough time." He would bring in pictures of his dad and would wear his dad's old hat habitually. It was heartbreaking.

Lennie seemed to fall off the radar for a while around then. I didn't even notice he wasn't coming in at first, but eventually I realized that I hadn't seen him in a month or two. And when I did finally see him again, I realized I'd missed having him around. For the trouble and occasional grief he'd caused, it was nice to have him back. I've since made it a point to pay more attention to him when he's around. I think we often tend to file him away as background noise rather than treating him as the honorary co-worker that he is.

Though he doesn't read much, Lennie does check out books. When it's near time for him to go, Mrs. C asks him if he's picked out any books and he goes around the library and selects around 8 books. Some are easy-reader books, some juvenile, some adult, some non-fiction. He almost always takes some from the non-fiction new book section. These he proudly brings up to the desk to check out. And when he returns a week later, he makes sure to proclaim to any patrons nearby how much he enjoyed them, usually recommending certain books from his pile to them. And I'd say about half the time, the patrons take his recommendation and check the books out for themselves. Lennie's good for circulation.

It's pretty apparent that Lennie has a deep crush on Mrs. C. He's known her for a long time and she is his age, after all. To us it not only helps explain why a guy who doesn't read spends so much time in a library, but also why he almost always obeys her without question. I had suspected he had feelings for her for a while just based on how he acted when Mrs. C was around. However, it wasn't until Mrs. C's wedding last summer that Lennie's crush on her was pretty much confirmed for everyone, including Mrs. C.

The future Mr. C, you see, occasionally worked with Lennie's father and he and Lennie had been friends from probably before Mr. C met Miss C. Lennie seemed okay with the two of them dating, but when it was explained that Mr. C would be marrying Miss C, Lennie didn't much care to hear about it. In the months leading up to the wedding, Lennie would ask Mrs. C if she was still planning to get married.

"Yes," she would say.

"Darn it," Lennie would say.

Everyone was a bit apprehensive at the prospect of Lennie coming to the wedding itself. We weren't so much worried that he would say something at the "Speak now or forever hold your peace" bit, as we were pretty sure he wouldn't understand what that meant. Mostly, we were worried he would get up and walk down the aisle with the happy couple, as we had been warned Lennie had done at previous weddings he's attended. Lennie's a big guy and it might take a couple of people to hold him back, depending on how determined he was. However, it also seemed wrong not to invite him.

I don't know whether it was fortunate or not that Lennie didn't attend the wedding after all. I offered to sit with him and try to run interference, should it come to that, but he didn't come at all. Maybe he was afraid we'd make him dance to YMCA.

Weeks later, he asked Mrs. C how she was enjoying married life.

"It's very good," Mrs. C said.

"Darn it," Lennie said.