Final Monday

While at lunch with the wife, today, I mentioned that it was the final Monday I would work at the "liberry." She asked if I was saddened by this fact. I had to admit: not even a little. Cause, as has been well-chronicled here, I hate me some Monday.

What's there to miss?

• The incessant banging on and repeatedly trying of the handles of the doors to see if we're open yet despite the obvious sign clearly stating otherwise? Gone from my life.
• The annoyed expressions when we at last do unlock the doors? Gone from my life.
• The mad rushes by innanet crowders to get to the computers before they all fill up? Gone from my life.
• The endless procession of extraordinarily needy patrons, many of whom have questions that can only be answered by a person of authority, on a day when the people in authority are NEVER present? Gone from my life.
• Long time innanet crowders who have used the computers nearly every single day for the past couple of years yet still cannot get it through their head that we close at 5 on Mondays and act all shocked and amazed every week when we tell them they don't actually have another four hours at their disposal, but have to get off in ten minutes; or patrons who walk in the building at ten til 5 with the same expectations and literally smack themselves in the head because once again their poor, swiss-cheesed memory has failed them? Gone. From. My. Life.
  

As Mondays go, today was actually not terribly problematic. Sure, we had the usual Monday Madness, but not infuriatingly so. I tried to just go with the flow and live in the moment and enjoy it as much as I could. The major incident of the day came around 4p, when one of our computer patrons tripped and fell while trying to walk across a level section of floor. In this man's defense, he did suffer a stroke a while back and walks with a pronounced limp. I had just asked him to relinquish his computer for a new patron and he had been in the process of walking toward the circ desk when he fell. I was looking right at him as he dropped like a sack of dead, wet, marmosets, but I was powerless to do anything about it beyond giving off a sympathetic yelp. He fell hard, right on his arm and I was sure it would probably be broken, or dislocated or otherwise in need of an ambulance.

I rushed around the desk and over to where he'd fallen. Mr. B-Natural, who'd been seated at the computer directly beside the place where he fell also rushed over. The man was writhing on the floor, clutching at his arm. Quite intelligently, I asked, "Are you all right?"

The man looked up at me and then at Mr. B-Natural and, through a very painful-looking expression, said he was indeed all right. Mr. B-Natural began trying to help him sit up, but the man waived him off, saying, "I'm all right. I'm all right."

"Well, here's your glasses," Mr. B-Natural said, gathering them up and handing them over.

"I'll get them. I'm all right!" the man said.

"Well here's your hat," Mr. B-Natural added.

"I'll get them! I'm all right!" the man said, now practically screaming. "Please! I'm all right. I'll get them!"

"Can I help you up?" I asked.

"No! I'm all right!"

The more we tried to help, the angrier he got. But it felt very odd not trying to help him, particularly with everyone across the main floor was staring at us. I think, though, that the attention being directed at him was the problem. The man was embarrassed at having fallen and didn't want any more attention than he'd already caused himself. Slowly, Mr. B-Natural and I backed away, but not too far. This was good, because as soon as the man had clambered to his feet, he tipped over again and Mr. B-Natural was near enough to catch him.

"I'm all right!" the man hissed as Mr. B set up upright again. "I'll be fine, as soon as I can sit down for a minute," he said. Then, as though he needed further explanation for being annoyed with us, he added, "The physical therapists say it helps to do everything for myself."

"Do you need a chair?" I offered, looking for the nearest one.

"No! I'm all right! I'll get it! I'll be fine!"

So I walked away and the man hobbled over to the circ desk and leaned there for a moment. He left his hat and glasses there, then hobbled back over to Mr. B-Natural to apologize for being so gruff. I thought, if only you knew you were apologizing to the grumpiest old man in all the world, dude. Then the man hobbled off to the bathroom, where he stayed, in a seated position (if you get my drift) for quite a while.

"That guy really needs a cane," I told Mrs. B.

She agreed.

"...and the librarian never saw those books again. The end."

I arrived at work to find Mrs. A on the phone, talking semi-heatedly with someone about overdue books. From the sound of it, the books were quite overdue. There also seemed to be some issue of whether or not the person on the other end of the line had checked them out in the first place, or whether her husband had. More disagreements seemed to ensue, until Mrs. A at last told the woman that none of the overdues would be removed from her card, nor would our note concerning the overdues she had from us and those she had from Town-C's library unless all library books were returned to their proper libraries or otherwise paid for. This was starting to sound familiar, and with good reason, for the person on the other end of the line was none other than our old one time rogue, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit.

I soon received the skinny from Mrs. C and Mrs. A, for they knew of my previous involvement in the case due to the fact that I was the author of the very patron record note Mrs. Sackashit had called to complain about. It's a note which reads: "7/15/05 Patron has 9 items out from TRI-METRO COUNTY from 1998 and 2000. May not check out anything further until these have been paid for. Patron claims never to have had a card with TOWN-C nor to have checked out any of the items overdue there since May, nor to have actually been in TOWN-C's library since MRS. V was there. Husband, BLOATED SACKASHIT, has a card and has checked out the items she wished to get today. -TMCL"

It seems that after Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit's previous visit--during which it was determined that not only DID she already have a library card complete with driver's license despite her many claims otherwise, and already HAD several items from Town-C's library checked out on it which were then overdue from three months previous, not to mention Seefiles with our library for both her and her daughter left over from our previous computer circulation software--she had also failed to return any of the books she had forced her husband to check out for her in order to get around our rules. I know, shocking. It also seems that she'd been to another library branch recently and had attempted to check out more books. That branch, in Town-H, had quickly noted that Mrs. Sackashit already had a card and explained this to her.

According to Mrs. A, who had by then spoken with Town-H's branch, Mrs. Sackashit had then calmly claimed to them that she did not have a card in the library system at all, had never even set foot in Town-C's branch and furthermore did not have any books checked out from either Town-C or Town-A. Town-H's branch, seeing the exact same claims spelled out in my note in her patron record, pointed this fact out to her, including the note itself. Didn't matter to Mrs. Sackashit. She's perfectly capable of continuing to calmly lie in the face of all claims to the contrary. She told them she'd never set foot in either Town-A or Town-C's libraries and didn't have a card at all. Nevermind that the contact information and driver's license number on her application with Town-H were exactly the same as in her pre-existing patron record, she still would not admit to having a card at any library. Wisely, Town-H declined to check anything out to her. And, having no more family members on hand to press into service, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit had then left empty-handed.

We figure, not long after that, she'd decided to call our branch to find out what this note business was all about. So Mrs. A read it to her, then listened to Mrs. Sackashit's claims that she was not even the same person that this note concerned, again despite the fact that she lived at the exact same address and had the exact same driver's license number as the person that note concerned. Furthermore, her husband, Bloated, was also not the same Bloated Sackashit mentioned in the note, nor had he checked out any of the materials we claimed he had on her behalf. In other words, as much as it is possible to display one's shiny, polished pair of "brass-ones" over a telephone, Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit certainly had them out on two silk-covered orthopedic pillows with a WWII anti-aircraft spot trained on `em.

There was also some question raised about wildly overdue books that had been checked out by a Jessica Sackashit who appeared to live at the same address as Lying and Bloated Sackashit. Mrs. Sackashit said she didn't even know anyone named Jessica Sackashit and was of no relation to her and, therefore, didn't have any of her books. Mrs. A countered that according to Town-C's librarian, who she'd been in contact with, Jessica Sackashit was Lying and Bloated's daughter (the very daughter, in point of fact, for whom Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit had originally come to our library back in 2005 to find books) and it seemed quite curious that they wouldn't know her.

Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit then gave the equivalent of: "Ohhhhhh, you mean JESSICA Sackashit. Come to think of it, she IS our daughter." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist according to Mrs. A.

Lie after lie after lie after lie, spat out as calmly as could be.

Mrs. A told Mrs. Sackashit that we would not be removing the note from her record until such a time as she paid for her books, because clearly this patron record WAS hers, as were those of Bloated and Jessica theirs. Mrs. Sackashit would also need to take up the matter of the books and/or money she owed to Town-C's library with them before any sort of service would resume. Mrs. Sackashit very calmly accepted this and politely hung up.

Afterward, Mrs. A said noted that she'd not had so many lies spat in her face at once since the patron with the Dick Francis problem the other day.

Dear Fatty Manchild...

... I realize that you are far too busy surfing the internet to be bothered to answer your cell phone. On most occasions, I might even respect this. However, whoever is phoning you clearly wishes to speak with you in a most desperate manner, for they have been phoning and rephoning you once per minute for the past eight minutes, allowing each ring cycle to ring its fullest. And while we currently have no anti-cell phone policies preventing you from allowing your phone to ring ad infinitum, I must take issue with your decision to do so, as opposed to simply turning it off or declining the calls. I say this, because your decision to allow your phone to ring so frequently has meant that the rest of us have been subjected to repeated performances of your ringtone choice of Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" at your phone's top volume.

One very practical and satisfying method for muffling that noise comes immediately to my mind, sir. Pray I don't entertain it further.

Yours with malice,

--juice

Dear Mr. Perfect...

...I realize that you are in deep, abiding and passionate love with the word processing program W0rd Perfect.

I realize that you adore this program to a degree bordering on and possibly crossing into a religious fervor.

I realize that you miss W0rd Perfect dearly, having gone so long without seeing it on the majority of our patron computers.

I realize that you feel all other word processors are lesser programs that have only come to wide use due to a conspiracy instigated by Micr0soft in which they prefer to bundle their own suite of programs with their own operating system and do their best to block all other programs from being used, even if and possibly because, as you believe, those other programs are superior in all respects to the dreaded 0ffice suite.

I realize that while your great love of W0rd Perfect is currently chaste and chivalrous in nature, I suspect you would indeed make sweet sweet love to it if only we had the technology.

I realize these things. You do not have to explain them to me... YET. AGAIN.

I now need for you to realize that while we do still have one remaining patron computer that contains W0rd Perfect, it is currently in use by Matilde the Cranky Wiccan and I will not bust her off of it merely to allow you to suckle at your lusty, Corel-spawned teat.

No.

Please also realize that while I have spoken on your behalf to my superiors and have asked if there was any chance we could see our way fit to purchase and install W0rd Perfect on all our computers, I did so not out of any service-oriented nature but merely in the hope that if we granted your wish you might finally shut the f*ck up about it. I have since been informed by my superiors that this "ain't gonna happen," which I believe I have explained to you on one previous occasion already. Purchasing said program for each of the patron computers would be costly and redundant as those computers already contain a word-processing program that is, to our way of thinking, far superior to your particular choice of unrequited visual affection, which, incidentally, blows more goats than Halle Berry's Catwoman.

Also, note that I in no way believe that granting your wish would actually accomplish our ultimate goal of getting you to shut the aforementioned f*ck up. In fact, I am fairly certain that doing so would only lead to lengthy sessions of proselytizing to the staff, and any other patrons unfortunate enough to stray too close, as to the wonderfulness of your electronic dream-bride and how unworthy Micr0soft W0rd is of sharing four of the same letters in her name.

Please also realize that I have exhausted the avenues available to me to do anything to help you and am leaving the responsibility for bothering my superiors on this particular issue entirely in your hands from this point forward. In other words, I would appreciate it if you would leave me the hell alone about it.

You should do this, if not for my sake, then for your own...

...for there is one last thing I wish you were capable of realizing, but that I know you are not...

...you, sir, have no idea the mental gymnastics I have to go through in order to keep my limbs within my control and prevent them from setting you aflame every time you bring up your favorite topic. I do not know how much longer I can stave off the commands of the voices whispering in my head. If you must return to bother me some more, please, for your own protection, do so only while wearing fire-retardant clothing. Some kevlar couldn't hurt either.

Your greatest fan for ever and ever (but only if you go away for ever and ever),

--juice

Dear Patrick McGoohan...

... star, head-writer and executive producer of The Prisoner.

That was your ending?

Must have been some really good weed, dude.

For years I've read how great your program was and I knew how much fanboy attention had been focused on it. What I couldn't understand was how the secret of the show's ending hadn't been spoiled for me. It seemed like any secret that big would have long since become part of the nerd collective unconscious and would have filtered down to me at some point. However, it had not. I even read the unofficial The Prisoner comic book sequel by Dead Motter, before watching even one episode, and still had no idea how the original series ended.

I thought, Could it be that the international sonofabitch community is, for once, actually being cool and not attempting to spoil the ending for everyone? Or does everyone simply assume that the ending was spoiled nearly 40 years ago, so why bother?

Then I watched the final episode and realized that the real reason no one bothered to spoil it is that people have to be able to understand it first before they can explain it enough to spoil.

Okay, sure, there was some lovely subtext... I think. But what the hell, man? I understand the need to keep things a little vague and mysterious, but give me something I can at least work with. Throw me a crumb! Not monkey-masks, beard-shaving, rockets to nowhere, allegiance-shifting midgets and a song and dance number on the back of a moving flatbed. I guess I can at least respect the left-field approach to wrapping up a series with so many secrets, but dammit, David Lynch only wishes he was as weird as all that.

Bewildered, semi-unsatisfied and more than a little annoyed,

--juice

Dear BBC America...

... you kipper-eating, Beckhamless, Thames-floating links of doody.

Thank you ever-so-kindly for rerunning the episodes of The Prisoner a few months back, allowing me the opportunity to have my DVR record them all so I could watch them at my leisure over the course of several weeks. It's a show that, for decades, I've heard described as one of the all-time greatest science-fiction programs in the history of television and is one I have never had the chance to watch until you began rerunning it. For that, I genuinely thank you.

However, allow me to complain that in your haste to rebroadcast The Prisoner, you seem to have gotten a bit mixed up as to the actual broadcast order of those episodes in two unfortunate ways.

Firstly, you began with Episode 1 (good start), then jumped to Episodes 10 - 17 (not so great) before going back to broadcast Episodes 2 - 9. Again, a complete set in the end, but not exactly broadcast in order forcing me to have my DVR to record them all first, then watch each episode only after checking the episode numbers in each episode's description so that I could watch them in sequence.

Secondly and most tragically, the final two episodes of the series were mistakenly labeled as Episodes 8 and 9 rather than Episodes 16 and 17, as they should have been. Imagine my dismay at reaching what should have been the half-way point of the series only to find the series had ended right before my eyes (if you call THAT an ending).

To put it another way, I was robbed.

By you.

And you now owe me.

To make it up, I must insist that you broadcast the entirety of Torchwood (in its proper broadcast order), as well as The Sarah Jane Adventures, (also in its proper broadcast order). You might also throw in repeat broadcasts of classic Tom Baker Doctor Who episodes and any Rik Mayall comedies you might have on hand.

And if you really want to get back in my good graces, you may refrain from showing any more episodes of Are You Being Served? from now until the end of time.

And if you really REALLY want to get back in my good graces, you might also use the Tardis to go back in time and convince the actors who played Jeff in Coupling and the ones who played Archie and Duncan in Monarch of the Glen that it was a very bad idea to leave those series at the height of their popularity and that the shows just wouldn't be the same (or, in some cases, MAKE ANY F%$#!NG SENSE) without them and that they should really stay on to wrap things up. Give `em more money if they ask for it. They deserved it.

Oh, and more Red Dwarf, please.

That, I believe, should do nicely.

Yours forever and ever,

--juice

Linguistics Lessons not found in the 463s

A patron approached the circ desk and announced that she needed a new Social Security card. She added that "THEY" said she could get one at the "liberry." Could I help her?

Now, while I really wanted to tell this lady, "No, ma'am. You can't get a new Social Security Card here. That's the job of the Social Security Administration and we're a library," I did not. That's because after five plus years of working in this joint, I, like most of my "liberry" ass. brethren across the world, am semi-fluent in Patronese. Yes, Patronese, that mysterious language in which patrons say things that are seemingly nonsensical or wildly out of place but which given the proper perspective can be interpreted to mean something entirely different by those with the skill to do so. (It's a remarkably similar to Customerese, which derrivates from Fuktardic, the family of languages also containing Crackheadish, Patient-speak, Dumbassian and Crazy Talk.)

I consulted my inner English/Patronese dictionary and discovered that despite what she'd said, this patron did not actually expect us to fork over a new SS card on the spot. Instead, she hoped we could assist her in applying for a new SS card, perhaps even online. Of course, knowing what she wanted and achieving it are very different things, particularly when it came to dealing with a bureaucratic governmental agency that I doubted would be willing to reissue her a Social Security card without first seeing seven forms of photo identification, a note from her third grade teacher, and, probably, a Social Security card. I explained to her that while I could help her find the SSA website, I did not know off-hand if applying for a new card online was even possible. She was welcome to log on and have a look, though.

The woman looked very sad. "Well, I already went to the library in TOWN C and their computers couldn't do that," she said. "Do your computers have the same.... uh... the same... um..."

"Internet?" I guessed.

"Yeah," she said.

Again, I already knew what she really meant, which was to say that Town C's library hadn't been able to help her out, most likely due to having a volunteer manning the desk who wasn't entirely computer literate, or perhaps that their computers didn't have the correct version of Flash installed to navigate the SSA site. I would be able to help her find the SSA site and likely directions to a form to print out. Unfortunately, I also knew from her particular dialect of Patronese that she didn't really want to do any of this herself, but wanted me to do it all for her. I probably would have done it too, as helping patrons is MY JOB (and I should really look into shutting up bitching about it so much). However, before I could even offer, her cell phone went off. Her or her caller's reception must have been very bad because she kept having to repeat herself. She looked up at me during this and gave me a very disdainful look, as though her crappy phone were somehow my fault.

"Oh, just forget it," she said, standing up to leave. Of course, you already know that was Patronese for, "This is far more effort that I'd hoped to expend. I really did expect you to give me a new Social Security Card on the spot and you're a terrible human being for crushing my expectations by insisting I take some part in achieving my goals. Screw you guys, I'm going home."

Combat Pay (PART I)

Five O'Clock was nearly upon us, on my first day back at work, which meant the rest of the staff would soon flee the building, leaving me by my lonesome. That being the case, I went up to the staff bathroom to have myself a whiz before returning to the circ desk for my remaining two hour stretch. Upon entering the main room, I was greeted with the horrifying sight of Barbara Turdmurkle, bees of insanity buzzing frantically about her head, signing up for a computer.

Aw shit, I nearly said aloud. Mrs. B gave me a very sympathetic look as she walked past me to go log on a system for Barbie T.

This was not good. Not good at all.

Granted, a visit from Barbara Turdmurkle is never good, but it's especially bad when computers are involved. In addition to being BUGF**K CRAZY, Barbara Turdmurkle is also computer illiterate to an astounding degree. Yet she keeps purchasing services which require computer access to use.

After ten minutes trapped in the computer hall, putting her well past five o'clock, Mrs. B returned to the front room.

"Did you get her taken care of?" Mrs. C asked.

"I don't think so, but I'm going home," Mrs. B said. Then she added in my direction, "Sorry."

"Traitor!"

She quickly left, along with the rest of the gleeful traitors.

For the next twenty minutes I studiously avoided any library duty that might cause me to come in proximity to the computer hall. This was difficult, because people kept coming in to sign up for computers, causing me to have to actually enter the comuter hall to log them onto systems. Fortunately, the first one was at a system not in Barbie T's direct line of sight, so I was able to stealthily creep up, log it on and then creep away, much liken unto a ninja. I did notice what she was doing with her computer, though: she was trying to log in to her credit protection agency's site. No, no, no, no, no, no, not good. I instantly knew how this little drama was going to play out.

A few minutes later, one of the other computer users signed out and said, "That woman back there is having a lot of trouble on the computer. She kept asking me for help, but I didn't know how to help her."

I thanked the patron for the information, watched her leave and then stayed put at the desk.

Was this a demonstration of a library employee being actively and perhaps stubbornly non-service-oriented? Hells yes, and I make no apologies for it. I want NOTHING. TO. DO. with Barbara Turdmurkle if I can at all help it. Beyond being an exasperating and quite insane human being, Barbie T has a long history of claiming to have been groped, verbally abused or otherwise assaulted by men who have innocently assisted her in the past, regardless of witness testimony that such incidents did not occur.

An example: My boss Mrs. A told me that a few years back a neighboring library allowed a local man to conduct a computer class in their facility on a Saturday afternoon after closing time. One such Saturday, Barbie T came up and began banging on the door, clearly after the posted hours, and continued to bang on the door until the guy had to stop class to see what she wanted. Barbie T insisted that she HAD to make photocopies, that it was a dire photocopy emergency and she simply HAD to make them there despite his protestations that they were closed and he wasn't authorized to let nonclassmembers in the building. The man finally relented and let her in anyway. Being completely helpless with all forms of technology, Barbie T also required assistance in making her photocopies which, according to the legend, were numerous and complicated. The man had to stop his class to assist her, eventually got her to leave and then she went out into the community and told everyone she met that he'd felt her up and cursed at her when she declined his advances. Nevermind that the entire incident was witnessed by the members of his class who all said no such thing occurred. Unfortunately for many people, that was not the only time such allegations have been spread against innocents by Barbara Turdmurkle. I wish very much to avoid being her next victim.

Another example: Barbie T has a longstanding animosity with the neighbor in the apartment next to hers. I know this, as do a surprising number of people in our county, because Barbie T will tell anyone who strays near her about about how evil her neighbor is, how her neighbor has sex with her boyfriend against the adjoining wall just to annoy Barbie T, and how Barbie is convinced that the evil neighbor is trying to steal her identity. (And after seeing a glimpse of the kind of financial chaos that apparently exists in Barbie's life, I have to ask: Who would want it?) Rumor now has it that the reason we haven't seen Barbara Turdmurkle in just under a year is that she's had to spend some time away for psychiatric evaluation after leaving death threats on her neighbor's answering machine.

She is, as the medical establishment terms it, a Fruit Loop.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Nearly Killed a Neo-Hippy

A female neo-hippy happened in the other day to inquire about our free tax preparation service. (And for the record, this was an I-like-to-wear-patchouli-and-be-kind-to-the-earth-but-am-not-in-your-face-about-it-all-the-time-cute-granola-mom hippy, as opposed to an Everything-in-this-whole-country-is-wrong-and-it's-somehow-your-fault-(AND-George-Bush's)-and-you're-part-of-the-problem-because-you-won't-let-me-check-out-without-my-library-card-Where's-my-disability-check? hippy.) I had to explain to her that our free tax preparation program, despite what H&R Block and the other members of THEY keep telling people, is non-existent. Haven't had one for nigh on a decade and have no plans to aquire one. We've heard too many horror stories from other libraries that offer such programs—stories that include patrons being audited and blaming libraries for it, when, in fact, it was the fault of the tax preparer who volunteered at the library, or the fault of the patron themselves. No, sir. Don't need any of that.

Our neo-hippy patron then asked if I knew where she could get such free help locally. I explained that another area library still foolishly does offer such a service, but only to the elderly. For people her age, I knew of no other such service. And believe me, we've had an ear out for such services, cause we'd like nothing better than to roll that ball into someone else's court. (Course, now that I think of it, I could have told her the name of Amateur Accountant Tax Form Lady Who Plagues Us Every Year, except that might legally constitute giving tax advice and possibly poor advice at that.)

After she was satisfied that we weren't hiding such a program, she asked to use a computer and went off to have some internet time. Within 20 minutes or so, our printer began spitting out paper and continued doing so for a couple of minutes. Mrs. B and I were chatting, so I didn't notice the excessive printing until the neo-hippy came up and began freaking out at the mass of paper still spewing from the guts of the printer.

"Oh!! Ohh!!" she squealed, waving her hands in panic. "It's printing too many! I didn't print that many!"

I reached over and pressed the Cancel Job button. After a page or so more, it stopped printing. Then it started printing her next job, which from the "Page 1 of 60" at the top, was nearly as large as the last. I cancelled that one too. And then the 80 page third job that followed it.

"I didn't tell it to print that many," the hippy lady insisted. "I only wanted it to print the three sections I highlighted."

Ah, yes, the old No, I Only Printed the Highlighted Bits flawed theory of printing from the innanet. I explained to her how wrong she was in assuming you can somehow highlight stuff and hit print and actually get only that highlighted stuff without first going to the print menu and clicking the little box by SELECTED.

"What a waste of paper," the hippy lady said, gathering up the 70 or so pages she had coming to her. "I only wanted the three paragraphs I highlighted."

Obviously my first lesson hadn't taken. So, on my own screen, I called up a website, highlighted some text, went to the print menu and showed her the SELECTED option. "This is what you need to click next time," I said.

"What about this time? What do I do with this?" she said, holding out her quarter ream of paper, sympathy-seeking expression on her face.

"We charge 10 cents a page," I told her.

The lady, to her credit, didn't argue and paid us the $7.

DP for DPenedetta

A mom, dad and little kid came in, yesterday, put their books and assorted media returns on the circ desk and headed for the children's room to browse for more. Atop the stack of books was one of the Dad's returns, a DVD of The Rock's cinematic magnum opus, The Sc0rpi0n King. When I picked up the case, though, there was a curious rattling sound from within, unlike most DVD cases in which the user has properly seated the DVD upon its knobby little spindle. I opened the case to check and noticed immediately that while the DVD for The Sc0rpi0n King was actually seated properly, the DVD resting on top of it, entitled "DP My Pussy," was not. Yesirree, that's four hours of good, old-fashioned, European, double-penetration porn for your ass. Or, rather your... well, you know.

"Oh, my," I said, just as my coworker, Mrs. B, stepped behind the desk. I showed her my find. She tittered.

"Where did you...?"

"In here," I said, holding up the DVD case, the Rock's face grimacing from the cover. I nodded in the direction of the Dad, who could be seen, his back turned, just beyond the door to the children's room.

"What do we do?" Mrs. B said, still laughing.

"I have no idea," I said, barely containing my own fit of chuckles. Then the Dad stepped back into the main room and Mrs. B scattered, trying to regain composure. I continued to check in their other books, forcing my mouth into a frown to counteract the powerful forces working to make it grin. I debated what to do next.

First on my agenda was to unobtrusively slip over to the copier and photocopy the DVD's face, just so I could be sure to get my facts right when reporting it here later. This I did. The DVD appeared to be from a mailorder outfit similar to Netflix, only for porn. Next, the phone rang. It was for my boss, Mrs. A. So I left the circ desk, passed the Dad, passed the Mom & the Kid in the children's room, and went upstairs to tell Mrs. A she had a call.

"We just had a patron bring back some porn in the Sc0rpi0n King box," I whispered across the desk to her.

"Do you know who did it?"

"Yeah," I said. "He's still here. With his whole family."

Mrs. A cackled.

"I don't know what to do," I said.

"Give it back to him."

"You're serious?"

"Sure. Just tell him you found a DVD that wasn't ours in the case and you wanted to give it back."

I shook my head. "Yeah. This should be fun."

I returned to the circ desk. Within minutes, the Dad, the Mom & the Kid approached, books and "liberry" card in hand.

Now, here's where I may have made an error...

You know how every once in a while you'll hear a story in the news about some poor moron of a restaurant manager who fires an employee yet expects that freshly terminated employee to go ahead and finish out his shift? And, of course, by the end of the evening they find half a standy turd in the mole sauce and 50 cases of E. coli on their hands? Well, I kind of did the library equivalent. Instead of checking all their books out to them first and THEN passing over the porn, I served it up as my opening move.

"Um, we found... another... DVD in the Sc0rpi0n King box," I said. I slid the DVD face down across the desk. The Dad picked it up, took a one half second glance at its face and quickly pocketed it without even a mumbled "thanks." Only then, discomfort quite thick in the air, no eye-contact being made by ANYBODY, did I begin to check their books out to them.

*beep*
(stamp)

*beep*
(stamp)

*beep*(stamp)

(find where we hid the barcode on this one)
*beep*
(stamp)

*beep*(stamp)

...through the first ten of the books they'd brought up.

"Uh, we've run out of room on this card," I said, eyes still averted, holding out the eleventh book, as yet unscanned.

"That's... that's okay," the Dad said in a low voice. He gathered up the pile of books in one hand, the Kid in the other and they quickly made for the door. I then flew to the window to see where they went, because I wanted a glimpse of how the scene was gonna play out once Mom & Dad hit the car. I could just imagine the verbal beating the Dad would receive for not only putting four hours of double penetration porn in the Sc0rpi0n King case, but returning it to the library to boot! How does one even DO that unintentionally? Of course, maybe it was her fault. Maybe they were in a big hurry to get out of the house and she was trying to gather all of Junior's things together, saw the partially open Sc0rpi0n King case on top of the TV, ejected whatever was in the DVD player and slapped it in there without looking. Maybe. Whatever the cause, I couldn't see any animation from them in the car that indicated an argument. Maybe that would have to wait until later, after they put Junior down for his nap.

I'm thinking we may never see them or the books they borrowed again.

Dear David McPhail...

...you big, honking, prolific, Massachusetts-livin', fanny-deposit.

Why ya gotta write so many frickin' kids books, huh?

Sure, they're good and all, but they're a pain in my keister to have to alphabetize along with the rest of the Ms in our Easy Reader section.

Okay, so it's our fault that we kept that section pretty wild and chaotic for nigh unto two decades, allowing it to flourish unhindered by the toils of alphabetic classification except for the scantest trace of the first letter of the author's last name. And in that time it became a near-mystical land where patrons had little hope of locating specific books without a Sherpa, a bagpipe player and perhaps a tube of KY. Why exactly my boss got a wild hair up her hinder to bring order to this land, after all these years, I'm not entirely sure. In my view, the land became so wild and disorganized due entirely to the evil children who frequent it and their grabby, shovy, occasionally poop-encrusted little hands. In fact, while I was busy alphabetizing your particular acre of shelf-space, one such whelp came over, yanked out a book from a recently alphabetized section and immediately proceeded to cram it back in a random part of the shelf for no observable reason other than an inherent need to sew discord. I very nearly slapped her. It is furthermore my prediction that these same stinking crumb-crunchers will soon return the Easy Readers section to its previous anarchic state despite any and all efforts on our part to civilize the joint.

However, you, David McPhail, aren't helping matters! Out of the entire section of authors whose surnames begin with Mc-, yours was easily the most represented of any single author. You even beat out Robert McCloskey by a healthy margin. So while I appreciate the quality, care and attention to detail you bring to your work, you're doing too durn much of it and it's cheesing me off! Do you realize the hours of manpower it's going to take to keep your books in any kind of order? Dear God, man, just reading your shelf alone will be enough to drive a person mad! How can you live with yourself? You inhuman monster!

In your favor, though, at least the covers of your wonderful books don't include a goofy, little, Culkin-esque picture of yourself gawking out at readers from beneath one of the world's worst comb-overs. (Yeah, I'm talkin' about you Robert Munsch!)

Yours sincerely,

--da juicemeister

Kayla + Summa Reading + Mom & Sis / Aggressive Ignorance = Crazed Staff

It's our penultimate week of Summa Reading `06, but already we're clawing our way toward the end with anticipation. Once again, our demonic little friend Kayla is in attendance. (See episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4.) Oddly, though, our troubles this year aren't due to little Kayla.

Mrs. C and Mrs. B began complaining a week ago that while Kayla was surprisingly well-behaved in Summa Reading, her mom and little sister are driving them mad. Mom insists on accompanying Kayla to the Summa Reading sessions, not to mention dragging little sister along with her. Once in attendance, though, mom doesn't really do much other than lay around. Literally. Mrs. C said that during craft time last week, Kayla's mom stepped out into the center of the ring of craft-assembling children and lay down in the middle of the floor for a nap. Meanwhile, little sister was allowed to run amok through the activity room, terrorizing everyone by stomping on the Summa Reading kids' crafts, or even on the Summa Reading kids themselves when they thoughtlessly allowed their hands to stay within Sis's stomping range. Mom didn't even attempt her usual ineffective, "No, no, mommy said `stop that,' " leaving it to Mrs. C and Mrs B to keep Sis from destroying everything.

After last week, it was Mrs. C's stated intention that the next time Kayla and crew arrived (late as usual, no doubt) that she would take the mom aside and tell her that we think Kayla will do fine by herself and that she, the mom, is welcome to take Sis and wait downstairs. And this is precisely what Mrs.C did yesterday. According to Mrs. A, who watched safely from her office, Mrs. C took Kayla from her mother before they could even make it to the top of the stairs, ran off with her and closed the activity room door firmly behind her. Kayla's mom then stood on the stairs looking worriedly up at the closed door, as though she could hardly stand not being in there to aid in the chaos.

So for an hour, I got to watch Mom and Sis mill around the children's room picking out books. Little sis hasn't quite reached the level of destruction capable by her older sister, but I'm sure she's just working up to it.

When Summa Reading was over, Kayla picked out nearly her weight in board books which she marched up to the desk with, announcing she wanted to buy them. Her mom tried to explain that she already had several other books picked out and that they could only take what they had room for on both her library card and Kayla's. Before they could check them out, though, Mom said they needed to fetch all their returns from the car to check-in. I was afraid this would mean Mom was going to leave the little ones in our care while she fled to the car for a much needed break. Kayla had already been trying her best to pop all our inflatable animals in the kids room by violently attempting to ride them. ("No, Kayla, don't ride the animals. No, Kayla, mommy said don't ride the animals. Kayla? Are you listening, Kayla? Kayla?") Fortunately for us, mom took both kids to the car with her for the search.

After ten minutes of blissful silence, during which I pre-date-stamped their books for added speed to their departure and during which no animals were menaced nor any little sister voices raised in spine-rending wail, they returned with their check-ins, which I then checked in. Afterwards, I looked up at them expectantly only to find expectant looks from them already.

"Um, do you have your library cards?" I asked.

"No, I don't think so," Kayla's mom said. Expectant look, expectant look.

"I'm sorry, but you do need your library card in order to check books out."

"Oh, really?" Kayla's mom said without any of the usual conviction of people genuinely surprised at this news. "Well, let me see." She began leafing through her wallet, occasionally gesturing other patrons around her, as the line at the desk was backed up by this point. Meanwhile, little sis had discovered the two brooms we keep beside the front door and was walking around with them. I wasn't worried, at first, as it gave me a chance to make the joke, "Are you going to sweep up for us?" Then she dropped one of the brooms and began swinging the other one with a force that, had she been a baseball player, would have got her brought up on charges of `roiding. One such swing nearly took off her sister's head and another nearly took out the glass of our front door. Mom ignored her and continued to search her wallet, leaving Mrs. A to bravely run over and disarm the child.

"Maybe they're in the car," Mom said. She gathered up kids and went to the car, but came back far sooner than a lengthy search would have taken. Little sister was now wailing again.

"I don't have the cards," mom said.

"Well, I'm sorry, but we do require a library card to check out books."

"All right, then," Mom said, looking downcast and without a friend in the world. "I guess we'll just come back some other time." Pause, then eyes flash up, full of hope.

"Okay," I said.

Mom stood there at the desk for several more seconds, as though waiting for me to relent. Little did she know, I am relentless. Meanwhile Kayla had returned to the children's room to pop more animals so Mom went in seemingly to collect her. She told Kayla to stop jumping on the animals because they had to leave. Next, she added that they wouldn't be getting any library books because they didn't have their library cards. I expected Kayla to freak out and burst into loud tears at this. In fact, I think Mom was counting on that reaction too, hoping a tantrum incident would give us added incentive to let them check out anyway. However, Kayla didn't take the bait and went right on happily squashing our plastic elephant into the floor.

Instead of collecting Kayla and leaving as she'd just said they needed to do, Mom stepped back into the main room, stood in the middle of the main room's floor and held screaming little sis in her arms there for a full five minutes. There was no indication as to why, she just stood there and let the toddler scream herself silly. Wail, wail, wail, spine-clench, spine-clench, spine-clench. Occasionally, Mom would glance pittifully in the direction of the circ-desk, leading me to again reach the conclusion that Kayla's mom was intentionally inflicting her children on us so we'd relent just to get them all out of the building. It was extortion, and brilliantly played. However, I became all the more determined that my administration would not give in to terror. I stayed planted at the desk. There was no danger of us letting her check out sans card, but there was the possibility that someone on staff would take pity on Mom and let her use one of their cards to check out. Wouldn't be me, but I could sort of see Mrs. A possibly offering just to make the screaming stop.

After five minutes of screaming, Mom approached the desk again. I'd stepped away from the computer and was speaking to Mrs. A back at the window. Mrs. J was now nearest to the computer, so mom tried to deal exclusively with her in a very low voice. Unfortunately for Mom, Mrs. J is hard of hearing. After a couple of low-volume failed attempts, Kayla's mom finally explained at full-volume to Mrs. J that she wanted to check out the pile of books that was still on the desk, but that she'd forgotten their library cards. Hopeful look, hopeful look.

"Ma'am, we cannot check books out to you without a library card," I said, stepping over.

"But I have a library card," Mom said, pointing at the computer.

"No. We have to have the physical card."

"If you like, we can hold these for you until you come back," Mrs. A offered.

Mrs. B then came over to join the crowd behind the desk and asked if the little sister had a card yet. Mom looked hopeful at this, but then Mrs. B pointed out that they would only be able to 10 books on that card and not the full 20 she wanted, so Mom decided not to get any extra cards at all.

"We'll just come back on Saturday," Mom said.

"We're not holding those until Saturday," Mrs. A said. "I thought you meant you would come back later today."

Mom adopted a sad tone and said they lived too far away to make a second trip back.

"Okay, well, maybe you can find them next time," Mrs. A said. We then collectively dispersed from the desk, our business concluded with no further need for discussion, leaving Mom to look unhappy. After Kayla and family finally left, a good ten minutes later, Mrs. A said that she was worried that she'd offended Kayla's mom by saying we wouldn't hold the books for two days. (It really wouldn't have been an issue had there only been a couple of books, but our hold bin is packed to the gills right now and there isn't room for 20 extra books in there.)

"So what if she is mad?" I said. "What's she going to do? Not come back next week? Yeah, that'll show us."

Barbie T.: Master of the Internet (PART 1)

The situation: Late last week my boss, Mrs. A, secluded herself in her office to take care of “liberry” business. My co-worker, Mrs. B, had secluded herself in our storage area to work on more book donations. Everyone else had either fled town or at least the building. I was therefore Cap’n Solo when it comes to running the joint. I’d just logged a patron onto a computer and was on my way back to the front room when I crossed into the children’s room and saw an unwelcome sight blocking my way back to the desk.

“Excuuuuse me,” Barbara Turdmurkle said in her usual slow, breathy, singsong voice. Her voice was nearly a whisper and she began beckoning me over with quick waves of her hand. Beyond her, I could see there were three people lined up at the circ desk. I SO did not need this.

“Excuuuse me, but I’m going to need your help with something,” she said. Before I could stop her she continued, still in a whisper, “I’ve been getting these very eerie phone calls at my house recently and I think someone may be trying to interfere with my credit.”

“Okay, I’ll be right with you in just a minute,” I said. "I need to go back to the desk." I then wedged my way past her in the door frame

"No!" she said, then remembered to whisper. "no."

By then I was moving away from her at a sideways angle so I could look back at her and still keep moving toward the desk. “I have to go back to the desk."

“No, no,” Barbara said again, frantically waving her hand for me to come back. She too was now edging away, moving back toward the computer hall, “I need your help.”

“I’m sorry, but I need to go to the desk right now.”

“No, I need your help with…”

“I. Need. To. Go. To. The. Desk. Right. Now,” I said.

Barbara blinked at me for a second. “Are you the only one here?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m the only one running the desk right now and I have to get back to it, right now. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

With that, I turned my back on her and went to the desk to take care of the patrons who chose to wait in line, rather than in ambush. When I was done and had signed the last of them onto a computer, I returned to the task of Barbara Turdmurkle. She had, by then, come into the main room and was waiting near the desk. Barbara Turdmurkle explained that for the past week she had been receiving odd phone calls at her house. Each time, the caller asked if she was Brenda. Rather than simply admitting that she was not Brenda and that this was likely a wrong number, Barbara T. had chosen to insist they the caller first tell her who they were and then she would say whether or not she was Brenda. The caller, in turn, insisted that she confirm her identity as Brenda first before they would say who they were. Eventually, stalemate realized, one of them would hang up on the other. Or, sometimes the caller would leave a message on Barbara's machine asking Brenda to phone him at a specific number. Adding to the oddity of this, Barbara Turdmurkle claimed the last four digits of the caller’s out of state phone number, as seen on her caller ID, matched the last four digits of her social security number. However, it did not match the number the caller had left on her machine. So Barbara Turdmurkle tried to phone the caller back at his given number. When the other line picked up it was answered, “Accounts.” And when Barbara began insisting that they tell her what sort of business they were running, the person on the other end said, “Brenda? Is this Brenda?” All of this evidence had thus convinced Barbara Turdmurkle that someone was trying to steal her identity and ruin her credit.

Now, I had to admit the events she described were odd, but not beyond the realm of explanation. Barbara Turdmurkle, however, was convinced her evil neighbor was behind it. (I’m not sure if this is the same evil neighbor she’s told us that she’s been to the police about on many other occasions, but it seems likely.)

Fortunately, Barbara is a member of some sort of credit protection program which she phoned right away. They told her they’d send her a credit report, but she needed to go online to their website and check her credit reports that way to make sure nothing seemed amiss. That’s what Barbara needed my help with because, as she said, "I don't know anything about computers."

I think we all know from my past experiences with Barbara Turdmurkle and technology, not to mention with computer neophytes in general, how well this is going to turn out.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Borrowers, Get Out!

Our usual Monday Madness came late this week. It came on a Thursday. And while we had the staff to deal with it, none of us wanted to. We all had our own projects we were trying to attend to and wanted nothing to do with the circ desk.

Meanwhile, the phone would NOT stop ringing and the Brent & Brice auxiliary league of neighborhood kids would NOT stop coming in and demanding computers, which they insisted on sitting at in groups of three per computer, despite being told by Mrs. C and then again by Mrs. A and eventually again by me that they could only have one per cause they’re too damn noisy otherwise. Soon we had a 45 minute wait time for computers due to the backlog of patrons, neighborhood and otherwise. That's when I heard a familiar and horrifying voice at the circ-desk. Yep, it was everyone's favorite Vid-Borrower, Mrs. Bellows.

Mrs. Bellows was turning in all her videos from the last time she was in. On the counter, next to her heaping stack of returned videos, was a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Pepsi and a large clear plastic box with a handle on top in which every ratty-assed audio cassette tape in the world had been crammed. I prayed none of the audio tapes were ours and she didn't open it to disgorge any, so probably not.

After piling all her videos on the desk, Mrs. Bellows seemed to have several brain-farts in a row, then said, "Is there a... do you have one of them... You got a computer I could sit on for awhile?"

No!!! Please NO!!!!

Mrs. C informed her it would be a good-sized wait for one, as they were all still clogged with neighborhood kids for the foreseeable future.

"I'll just be over in the videos, then," she said. Well, naturally.

After about half an hour, the neighborhood kids left in mass and the computers were all finally free. This coincided with Mrs. Bellows finishing her selection of more painfully bad videos and bringing them to the desk for checkout. Mrs. C asked her if she still wanted a computer. No response. And it wasn't like Mrs. Bellows was clear across the room, either. She was right there at the circ-desk. So Mrs. C asked her again, but Mrs. Bellows was far more concerned with obtaining a large plastic grocery bag from us in which she hoped to carry her selection of bad videos home. After loading it full, she stuffed in her box of tapes too, causing the whole thing to bulge.

"Do you have a refrigerator I could put my pop in?" she asked, indicating her half-empty 2-liter. "I want it to keep cold."

Mrs. C said, no, we didn't have a refrigerator. Not precisely true, as we do have a little tiny one, but it's not for public use and Mrs. Bellows would be hard pressed to find room in it for something the size of a 2-liter anyway.

Mrs. Bellows walked away and Mrs. C, seeing that I was about to go refill my water bottle, asked if I would go try to tell Mrs. Bellows she could have a computer. I did and it took a couple of tries to get through to her, but she declined needing one. Then, as soon as I’d fetched my water and returned to cataloging, she decided she needed one after all. Mrs. C, noting my ire, told me to stay put, that she’d take care of it. She went back and logged on the last computer back and then told Mrs. Bellows which one she could use. Naturally, Mrs. Bellows sat down at the middle computer and, since it wasn’t logged on and therefore not of use, began bellowing for help before Mrs. C could even get away.

After that, I sat back to wait for further inevitable bellowing on her part, as she has never been known to use a computer without some need of assistance.

And I waited and waited and waited.

Soon everyone had left for the day except me and Mrs. A, who was still trapped in her office doing work. After a while, Mrs. Bellows collected her overstuffed grocery bag and departed. Only then did Mrs. A come downstairs and ask if I’d heard all the bellowing. Apparently, Mrs. Bellows had been bellowing for several minutes and Mrs. A had nearly abandoned her work to stomp downstairs and tell the woman to stop screaming for help and get off her lazy ass and walk to the front room to ask for it. Oddly, I’d not heard a single bellow, and I’d been listening for them.

I was already thinking that Mrs. Bellows should probably get her hearing checked, but now I’m starting to think I should too.

Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #50

SETTING: My “liberry” shortly after a OUAW story time session. Little Kevin and Little Chuck Martin are at the circ-desk checking out books when their mom notices something is amiss.

MOM: Chuck, where is your shoe?

CHUCK: I don't know.

MOM: Where did you have it last?

CHUCK: I don't know.

As we are seconds away from closing and I want all patrons to leave, I dash to the children's room to look for Chuck's shoe. That Chuck had lost his shoe was hardly surprising. Not that the kid's dumb, or anything. In fact, he's pretty sharp. He actually once negotiated with me as to how many stories he was willing to sit through before he would stop paying attention to me and read his Calvin & Hobbes book instead. (Two. The answer is two.) He'd probably left his shoe behind on purpose just so a big deal would be made about it.

Sure enough, I found Chuck's shoe beneath the kid's computer where he'd been minutes earlier. I passed it to his mother, who passed it to Chuck.

MOM: And what do we say to Mr. JUICE?

CHUCK: Thanks, Mr. JUICE. You're the best.

ME: Whoo hoo!

CHUCK: You're really really super. You can't be touched. Nobody beats your high score.

It was only then that I realized how backhandedly disingenuous Chuck's comments were, despite his cheerful tone. That a kid so young could wield sarcasm so deftly was impressive. The little shit.

Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #45

PATRON: Hey, do you got any tax forms here?

ME: Yes, sir. They're right behind you.

PATRON: (Turns and notices the large and obvious display of tax forms he missed on the way in the door.) Uh, thanks.

(The patron leafs through a few forms and booklets, picking out what he needs from the Federal side of the shelf.)

PATRON: Uh, you got any more state forms?

ME: (Sighes loudly within head) Yes. They're on the other side of the shelf there, in the yellow bin.

(Long pause)

PATRON: No they're not.

ME: Huh?

PATRON: It's empty.

ME: Oh. Oops.

The Borrowers

I drove up to the library one day to find a patron outside taking an unnecessary amount of time trying to park her car. Sure, all of our spaces are parallel spaces, but she wasn't even doing a proper job of parallel parking in one of them. Instead, she had driven into the handicapped space then leaned way out her window so she could better see the curb as she backed her car down the hill into the parallel space behind. After swerving to avoid hitting her car, I'd then had time to drive up the hill, parallel park my own vehicle, gather up my things, exit the car and start across the lawn to the library while she was still trying to back into her space.  I tell you all this because it further informs as to the sort of patron I was about to have to deal with.  For this lady, you see, was a prime example of an especially irritating breed of patron known as The Vid-Borrower.

Vid-Borrowers are people who come to the library for the sole purpose of checking out our free videos. Granted, this is a perfectly valid thing to do and, despite my complaints here, I am not the kind of library staffer who believes you're not a real patron unless you're checking out books. However, Vid-Borrower Status, like its dumpy cousin Intanet Crowd Status, often brings with it certain annoying and consistent eccentricities.

For instance, after Ms. Video had finally parked her car (still poorly) and come inside to turn in all her old videos, she then sniffed around the video shelf by the circulation desk for a few minutes and then blurted out, "Where do ya keep yer adventure moovies?"

I reached across the counter to the video shelf and grabbed Buns of Steel, but only Mrs. A noticed and laughed.

I explained to Ms. Video that we don't really have an Adventure Movies section. (In fact, our videos are not arranged in any particular order, mostly because our patrons refuse to leave them in any particular order and we're tired of fighting against this.)  Still, we did want to be helpful so Mrs. A and I came over to the shelf to look for adventurous sorts of movies.

"How bout this?" I asked, passing the patron our copy of Dances With Wolves. Seemed pretty adventurous to me when I saw it. After all, how much more adventurous can you get than a guy stuck on his own in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by potentially hostile Indians, homicidal assholes for superior officers and a damn dancing wolf?

"Noooo, I don't want no westerns," Ms. Video said in a most emphatic tone. "I want something outdoors."

Do what? She wants adventure movies... set outdoors... but no westerns? Yeah, well, good luck, Peaches! I guess it's a Milo & Otis evening for you.

Rather than wait for us to find something else for her, though, Ms. Video opted to take her current selection of movies and go home. At least she was nice and didn't complain about it, which often happens with Vid-Borrowers. A major problem with the Vid-Borrower patron archetype is that they seem to feel that if they're going to use us as a video store we should also have as wide a selection as a real video store. And when they learn we most certainly do not, they can sometimes get huffy.

For instance, one such Vid-Borrower of the past became irritated with us that while we owned the Julian Sands magnum opus Warlock we had somehow not had the foresight to stock Warlock II or III. According to her, the first one ended on a cliff-hanger and she wanted to know what happened next.

"I'm sorry, but we don't own Warlock II or III," I explained. I had already explained this to her once before, but it didn't take.

"Well, when are you going to get them?" she asked.

"Um. I doubt we will," I told her.  I then tried to explain that the only videos we ever EVER buy are for our children's collection and anything else we have has been donated. Therefore, if Warlock II and/or III were to ever appear in our library it would be because someone had donated them to us and not because we had purchased them. This did not set well with the patron. Not at all. She seemed downright hurt about it. I then suggested to her that one of our local genuine video rental stores probably had both titles in stock and on the shelf. Upon my saying this, though, there came a sharp intake of air from the Vid-Borrower followed by the phrase, "Oh, no. Videos is `spensive."

While I give lip-service to it being hunky-dory for patrons to borrow videos exclusively, I must admit that I do find people who wouldn't crack a book at gunpoint very annoying. It's certainly not an all or nothing thing with Vid-Borrowers, as there are quite a few who do check out books, just as there are book patrons who check out videos. However, when Vid-Borrowers do get books, I have noticed a propensity among them to exclusively seek books by author V.C. Andrews. I can't really speak to the true reasons behind this, but the rather obvious correlation I could make is that Flowers in the Attic largely revolves around consensual sibling incest and this IS West Virginia. That's SO stereotypical that I should be deeply ashamed, but dammit the stereotypes have to start somewhere! (Come to think of it, that would make a fine slogan for an Abercrombie & Fitch state T-shirt. "West Virginia: Dammit, the Stereotypes Have to Start Somewhere!")

I also find that a very high percentage of the Vid-Borrower Crowd are also members of the Intanet Crowd. One in particular, Mrs. Bellows: The Video Borrowing Gorgon, even made the Rogues gallery.

Mrs. Bellows: The Video Borrowing Gorgon is exactly as horrible as she sounds. She's a round and hefty woman who closely resembles Tweedle Dum from Alice In Wonderland in nearly every aspect except mode of dress. Slap some stripes and overalls on her and you've got yourself a literary figure the likes of whom would frighten Thursday Next.

Mrs. Bellows was mostly known for her video-borrowing during the first few encounters I had with her. She was of the very variety of Vid-Borrower who checks out her card-limit in videos and then complains bitterly about our lack of certain titles, as though we're responsible for stocking the latest blockbuster. We the staff used to cringe collectively when we saw her waddling up the walk because we knew we were in for trouble. We weren't sure why she complained so much, as her tastes in movies skewed toward the extraordinarily shitty. And this is hardly due to us having only shitty movies in our collection. We actually have a large majority of the films on my mental list of the top 50 greatest films of all time. However, she never wanted any of the good ones. Instead, she gravitated toward anything starring the likes of Michael Ironside, Dolph Lundgren, Brian Bosworth, Chuck Norris, Rutger Hauer, Pauley Shore, Tim Thomerson, Vanity, or any combination therein. (Oddly, we don't own a single Rob Schneider movie, but I'm sure she would have borrowed it if we had.)

Like I said before, though, often our Vid-Borrowers do double duty as Intanet Crowders and Mrs. Bellows was no exception.

There are many patrons among the Intanet Crowd who come in daily to check their e-mail, read news, play crosswords, chat with skanks, etc. However, there's a particular flavor of the Intanet Crowder that does all of the above in a very obsessive, possessive, and compulsive manner. They have a hunger for their e-mail, news, crosswords, chatting, etc. that is overpowering and they will defend their time on the internet with their lives and try to extend it by any means necessary. Mrs. Bellows was not one of these people, but I think she really really aspired to be. She definitely had the hunger to get on the internet and seemed to recognize what an colossal amount of time could be wasted with it, but unfortunately she just didn't have the brains to figure out how to actually do so. In fact, she could barely check her e-mail without calling for help, which is how she earned her nickname.

Mrs. Bellows, when confronted with an internet hurdle she couldn't jump, would not, like a nice patron, get off her duff, walk twenty paces, and politely ask a staff member for assistance. No. She kept her considerable keister planted in front of the computer and would, instead, bellow at us for help.

The scenario would play out like this: I'd be up at the circ desk and would hear...

"He'p!"

(Thirty seconds would then pass during which I would ponder whether or not I actually heard Mrs. Bellows bellowing for help.)

"HE'P!"

(Yup. Sure sounded like it. Amazing. She actually expected that she could bellow like that from way back in the computer hall and someone would come running to help her. How lazy is that? It's not like she's disabled or anything. She's just that lazy!)

"HE'PP!"

(Still not moving to "he'pp".)

"HEEEE'P!!"

($%#&!)

So I'd trudge on back to find out what stupid-assed thing had flummoxed her this time. Usually she had forgotten her password and couldn't get into her e-mail, forcing me to guide her through the I'M A DAMNED MORON AND LOST MY PASSWORD page for Hotmail.

Or, better yet, she'd been to this one site this one time but couldn't remember where to go to see it again and really wanted to and also she couldn't remember ANYTHING else about it that might give me a clue as to how to get her back there, but it was really nice.

Or, even better yet, she'd accidentally X'ed out of Internet Explorer and now CAN'T REMEMBER HOW TO GET BACK INTO IT!

I tell you, it was all I could do to keep from primal screaming in her face. This went on for weeks and she steadfastly refused to learn from her mistakes, or otherwise get any smarter, despite our many attempts to teach her how to use the computer.

Fortunately for us, Mrs. Bellows stopped coming round to see us. I don't know if it was because she ran through our shitty movie supply or if she just doesn't have reliable transportation to get here. I do know that she now lives in Town-C, which is a nice distance from us in Town-A. (And, hell, even if she lived closer it's not like she was really gonna walk.) We haven't seen her at our branch in months, but I did see her one time at Town-C's branch, when I popped in to return some ILL's to them one day. There she was, squatted on a chair in front of one of their computers, checking e-mail. She didn't bellow for help while I was there, but it would have been quite a bit less offensive had she done so, since Town-C's computers are in close proximity to the circulation desk.

It must be a transportation issue that keeps her from visiting us. Town-C doesn't have nearly the selection of videos that we do.

Conference Week: Day 1

(Reconstruction of Eaten Blog Entry, with a big thanks to Phil and Sam for sending me the original pre-chewed feed which I've now reincorporated)

Today is the first day of our state's "liberry" association conference, taking place in a resort hotel up in the northern part of the state somewhere.

Am I going? No.

Do I want to go? No.

Are me and Mrs. J the only staff members in house today? Yes.

Am I wearing shoes appropriate to a 10 hour shift? No. (These Skechers tend to start biting after about four hours. My feet are screwed, but it's my own fault.)

Am I anticipating "liberry" goodness/badness to shortly ensue? Hey, it's 10 hours in the crazy house here. Of course there's going to be standard issue "liberry" activity, both good and bad.

8:54 a.m.-- a full six minutes before we open, I get a phone call asking to speak to Mrs. C. I have a feeling that the phrase "I'm sorry, she's out of town at a conference for the rest of the week" will leave my mouth several thousand times today.

9:24-- Yet another call, this time for Mrs. A.

9:44-- And we have our first Rogue sighting of the day as Mr. Smiley comes in. He brings Mrs. Smiley with him. Mmm, that's some grumpy old people goodness for your ass.

9:58-- More people phoning for Mrs. A.

10:06-- We get our first computer patrons of the day. Two at once. Unrelated.

10:10-- Mrs. J informs me that some mischief-minded turd-blossom has removed the bolts that hold the back guard-rail portion of our rolling step-ladder in place. As a result, she nearly tumbled ass over teakettle off the top of it while trying to shelve a book. That's right, Mrs. J might have been killed because some asshat kid thought it would be funny to use his dad's leatherman to unscrew the bolts. The culprit seems to have stolen the bolts as well. Now I have to go put a sign on it telling patrons to stay the hell off of it before someone else tries to take a header.

10:11-- Someone comes in looking for Mrs. A.

10:15-- One of our board of directors, Mrs. Day, calls to say she's going to come in to sign checks and is on her way. This doesn't actually mean she's on her way. This means at some point during business hours today she'll roll in, probably at an inopportune moment, and will likely give me shit about having to come in and sign the paychecks two full days early, like I'm twisting her arm and forcing her to come in. SHE CALLED ME!

10:22-- A patron asks if we're closed tomorrow because of Toyota. I say, "No, it's Veteran's Day. What about Toyota?" He explains that Toyota will be filming a car commercial along mainstreet in Town-A, just down the hill from the library. They're apparently going to close off the entire area for traffic throughout the day. Good thing we won't be open.

11:34--Mrs. Day comes in to sign checks, several hours earlier than I expected. She doesn't even give me any crap, though she does have an ILL request for a book that does not exist in the entire state system.

12:40 p.m.-- I see a crabby looking lady trying unsuccessfully to put her books into our locked after hours book drop box out front. She must know that books that actually make it into the box are considered fine free, because when she finally brings them in I see that they are 89 days overdue.

12:51-- We're having surprisingly low traffic today. We did 169 checkouts yesterday, which is a busy day for us. I was expecting a patron flood since I'm the only guy manning the building. We've actually been able to search the shelves for overdues and mail the notices out, though. Ooh, that reminds me to remove Mrs. 89 Days overdue notice from the pile before we waste 37 cents on her.

12:55-- Parka makes his first appearance of the day. Oddly, he's not clad in his namesake parka despite how cold it actually is outside.

12:56-- I go to sign Parka on a computer. I have to wait for it to reboot from the ground up, cause the last user shut it down rather than just logging off. While I wait, two clients from the Unobstructed Doors Mental Health Assistance Organization come in and their aid heads them right for the restroom. One of them cuts a fart that is impossible to ignore. (*I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped... I will not let Parka see me laughing at the handicapped* )

1:45-- After nearly half an hour of circulation silence, I attempt to eat my lunch. Staff lunches are an odd phenomenon here. No matter what time we decide to eat, as soon as food is unwrapped and begun to be consumed, the patron floodgates open up and we're suddenly swamped. Food presence also tends to act as a magnet for one or more of our board members to come in—usually the one who thinks it's just horrible that the staff eats at the circulation desk in front of God and everybody. Hey, once we get the new library built and actually have a break room we can move the party somewhere else. Right now it's either the picnic table outside in the cold or Mrs. A's tiny office or the restroom. Of course, the moment I unburped the lid of my salad container today, the front door started swingin'.

1:50-- Parka comes up to complain that the internet is slow. He's enlisted the testimony of a fellow internet crowd member to back up his claim. Naturally, he assumes I have the power to do something about it. I don't, but I go reboot his computer for him anyway. He's lucky I don't go into a diatribe about how slow things USED to be a year and a half ago, back when we had dialup speed instead of cushy DSL.

2:18-- The Toyota crew evidently thinks our nearly post-Autumn town isn't foliated enough for them. Patrons have come in and mentioned that the crew is downtown in a cherry picker attaching leaves to the bare trees in front of city hall. From our side window, I can see them doing this.

2:43-- A female patron returns eight John Grisham and Patty Cornhole books on tape all of which are in horrible condition, are 61 days late and some of which are missing tapes. The cardboard cases look as though she sat on them repeatedly. She fesses up to one of the tapes being missing, but I detect others. Her husband—who looks exactly like you'd imagine Hagrid's younger brother might—unleashes two very loud open-mouthed sneezes with barely an "excuse me."

2:55-- Parka returns for his second appearance. He's evidently waiting for a specific e-mail.

3:00-- Like a big ol' coward who is only scheduled to work til 3p, Mrs. J flees the building leaving me by myself for the rest of the day.

3:25-- Blogger EATS this entry and I have to reconstruct it from the ground up. Thanks guys.

3:27-- Shortly after discovering this, the circ desk becomes awash in patrons. A lady is irritated that she can't seem to log on from home into the practice test service we offer on our website. The community college library has told her she needs to come to us for the password. I explain that we don't have a password for it. The old testing system used to use the patron's library card number for it, but I don't think that's how it works anymore. She claims she's tried that, but can't actually demonstrate for me how poorly this works for her because she has—all together now—forgotten her library card. She's fed up with the site and with me. Her attitude and the fact that blog entry was just eaten, is pissing me off. I tell her that Mrs. A and Mrs. C, the two people with definitive answers for her, are out until Monday.

"So, what, I'm out of luck until next week?" she says.

"Not if I can figure it out for you now," I say.

She starts ranting at me again. While she's busy with that, I load the practice test site on the circ computer and see that it clearly does NOT require a library card to access, but simply and clearly asks the patron to choose a username and password of their own. Once I've told her this, she suddenly remembers what her username and password are, logs into the system and is now in love with me that I've solved her problem.

3:37-- Someone phones for Mrs. A. Turns out the caller was already fully aware that Mrs. A is out of town at the library conference, she just thought she'd call anyway. In fact, the phones will NOT. STOP. RINGING. I can't even hang it up from the two calls I've just taken back to back without another coming in.

4:15-- Dadgum, I wish I had a big stool to sit on. Stupid Skechers!

4:34-- Our first call of the day asking what time we close. Whoo hooo, take a drink!

5:05-- And the world comes to the library. For 20 minutes straight, we're slammed. And when does the circ computer decide that it's going to take a break and completely freeze up? Oh, only when there's suddenly a line four patrons deep, two of whom want new library cards. I beat the computer into submission.

5:30-- Man my legs are hurting. Okay. Fine. I'll sit down.

5:48-- I call a patron about a book she has on hold. Unfortunately, she had just been in half an hour earlier so I should have given it to her then. I hate it when I do that.

6:03-- By pure chance, I spy Chester the (Potential) Molester parking in our half-hour parking and then lurking into the darkness toward the community college. From what we're told by the college's librarian, Mr. Rob, Chester's been racking up quite the reputation around there too. The only good thing about that is that at least the girls there are of consenting age.

6:32-- Half an hour to go. We've had very little traffic at all for the past thirty minutes. I think I'll vacuum.

6:51-- Already finished my end of the day duties. One last patron (who I like) is left to go. My 10 hour shift is nearly over. I plan to go home, eat whatever delicious meal my wife has prepared, and completely skip church choir practice. (The choir director is just gonna make me stand up.)

Shite! I hear a car!

Ahhh... False alarm.

6:59-- That's a wrap. Wow... a whole day with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C gone and no call from Mr. Kreskin. I would have had money riding on that one if there was anyone around to bet with.

7:00 p.m.-- I don my coat and exit stage right. (After craftily deleting my saved reconstruction file and browser history, of course.)

THEY live!

Not long ago, Mrs. A alerted me to some new material we have added to our deposit book section: a trucking class drivers instruction manual and video. This might sound pretty mundane to you, but I was frankly relieved to have them as it helps solve a semi-regular dilemma we've been having. In fact, two months back, a couple of adults came into the library and tried their level best to drive us insane over this very issue. Thankfully I was busy riding herd over the circulation desk chaos at the time and didn't have to deal with them, but I could hear the whole conversation as Mrs. A tried in vain to help them.

The female and speaking portion of the couple approached Mrs. A and said, "They told us you had a drivers manual for the driving test."  Her voice was nearly monotone. Her eyes slightly glazed.

We get this question on a regular basis. I'm not saying it's not a fair question to ask of a library, an institution that ostensibly deals in books and manuals of all sorts. However, the fact remains that we don't usually have any drivers manuals nor are we at all responsible for keeping them on hand. That's the job of the Department of Motor Vehicles, thank you very much.

"No, I'm sorry, we don't have a copy of the driver's manual here," Mrs. A said.

There was a pause.

"You don't have one?" the woman asked.

"No. We used to keep them in our collection, but people kept checking them out and not returning them, so we haven't added a new one in a while."

"But they said you would have one," the woman said.

"Well, I'm sorry, but we don't," Mrs. A replied.

The woman stared blankly at Mrs. A for a bit until something else occurred to her.

"Well, do you have the driving video?" the woman asked, very slowly and monotonely.

"No. I'm sorry," Mrs. A said. "We don't have one of those either. Again, we used to have one and we've tried several times to get a new one from the DMV, but so far they haven't responded to our requests."

The woman's blank look returned to full power. It wasn't a distrustful look, indicating that she might think Mrs. A was lying. Instead, it was a devoid of all thought look that indicated she had tried everything she knew to do and was now just going to stand there until her brain farted out some new option. Her husband wore a similar look, but he'd come in with it on, so I'm guessing it was normal.

"But they said you would have the book and the video," the woman said after quite a bit more staring.

"Well, again, I'm sorry, but we really, really don't."

Blank. Blank. Blank.

It was as if the woman thought that if she stared long enough and blankly enough Mrs. A would suddenly realize that, yes, we did indeed have a drivers instruction video and a manual and could go ahead and give them a license on the spot.

By then Mrs. J had wandered up and caught a little of what was going on and then asked what the woman was looking for again. Turns out it wasn't a simple driver's manual she wanted, but a Class C drivers instruction manual for folks looking to upgrade to a commercial license. This is an item we should be expected to have EVEN LESS than a regular drivers manual.

"Have you been to the DMV?" Mrs. J asked.

"No. Where's that?" the woman said. It was exactly as if it had never even occurred to her that the Department of Motor Frickin' Vehicles might be a good place to try.

Mrs. J spent five minutes trying to convey to them where the local DMV is located. This was something of a chore, even beyond the unreceptive audience, as the DMV's location is not the easiest to give directions to. It's located—some say hidden—way in the back of a huge brick building over in Town-B. The building itself does not scream OFFICIAL STATE GOVERNMENT OFFICE. Instead, it screams WAREHOUSE, and rather loudly. This warehousey air is further assisted by the fact that the DMV itself is not located in the vaguely office-like front section of the building, but rather way in the back in what was once the loading-dock of the building. And all official DMV signs meant to lead you to it are written in 12 point type. Add all that to the fact that the building is located on a confusing one-way street, in a town the roads of which are composed of almost entirely confusing one-way streets, and you see the dilemma.

"What's the name of that building it's in?" Mrs. J asked Mrs. A.

"I don't know."

"It's that brown one," Mrs. J said. "What's it called?"

"I don't know," Mrs. A repeated.

"It's right there by the lumber place. What's it called?"

"I don't know!" Mrs. A nearly shouted.

Mrs. A crept away from the couple, taking refuge with me behind the busy circulation desk. Sure, she was being intentionally un-service-oriented, but this was a couple for whom no help could be given. The both of them seemed to be very dim bulbs operating under inaccurate information and increasingly slow to realize that this particular light socket had no power for them. Also annoying was the use of the word THEY in referring to the mysterious cabal that had given them the inaccurate information and sent them to our door.

Just who were THEY?

Why would THEY think we would have any kind of supply of drivers manuals or videos?

Why would THEY send anyone to us for one in the first place?

Frankly, we're a bit pissed off with THEY. THEY've been giving us shit for quite a while now. If it's not for drivers manuals, then THEY've sent people in our direction for newspaper archives, high school yearbooks, obituaries, official county records, directory service (and at least 50 percent of those calls are looking for the super-secret telephone number TO THE DMV!!!!), new Social Security cards, complete biographies of every soul who has ever lived in the county and quite a few of those who haven't, and just about any other odd-assed thing a library should never be expected to have in the first place. Hell, we even got a call last month from someone who wanted us to provide her with a death certificate! Not an obituary, mind, but an honest to God death certificate. And not one of the historical death certificates from the nineteenth century that we actually do have locked away upstairs, (*FLIP*FLIP*FLIP* "Consumption... consumption... consumption... fell off a horse... consumption..."), but a death certificate for someone who died THIS VERY YEAR. Lady, we're not the coroner! We're a EFFing library!

After wasting a large chunk of time trying to explain the way to the DMV, Mrs. J paused to see if any of it had sunk into the blank couple's skulls. It hadn't.

"Could you write that down?" the woman said.

Mrs. J said she didn't think she could.

Mr. Kreskin Strikes Again

Mrs. A and Mrs C, our librarians, were both out all day at a meeting leaving me and Mrs. B in charge.

Around 4 p.m, Mrs. B asked me if Mr. Kreskin, the semi-psychic president of our library's board of directors had called.

"Nope," I said, "but I'm expecting a call from him any second now."

Mrs. B slid a piece of paper across the desk to me. "Well, if he calls, we're supposed to give him this phone number."

Not if. When.

As chronicled here a couple of times in the past, the only, and I stress ONLY, time I ever hear anything from Mr. Kreskin is when both Mrs. A and Mrs. C are out of town. I know it sounds fanciful and exaggerated for me to make this claim, but I assure you: He DOES NOT CALL unless the two people he is in a FOAM to talk to are NOT there. That's the formula and its more reliable than Old Faithful. And let me also stress that I don't mean to make fun of the man, even though I'm about to do it anyway. He's genuinely a nice person; he's just a pain in the ass to have to deal with when he gets his panties in a wad. And with all the activity and drama he's involved with in the effort to raise funds to build a big new library building for us, his panties are perpetually wadded.

At around 4:30 p.m. the phone rang, I answered it and was hardly surprised to find Mr. Kreskin on the line in an absolute panic.

"Is Mrs. A there?" Mr. Kreskin asked.

"Nope. Sorry, she's not."

"What about Mrs. C?"

"No, I'm afraid she's gone too," I said.

"Well, where did they go?"

"They're both at a meeting in TOWN-Y."

I could tell he was already royally pissed about this. See, before he retired, Mr. Kreskin used to be a big wig in the business world and he's somehow still accustomed to having people he wants to speak with instantly be at whatever number he calls, at all hours, ready to do his bidding. Snap snap, chop chop. And when he does eventually reach the people who are to do his bidding he is unsatisfied that his bidding has actually been done until he's checked behind them in triplicate.

"Did they send that FAX for me this morning?" Mr. Kreskin asked.

"I'm not sure, sir," I said. "I've only been here since one."

"Well, I need to know what was on that FAX, right now! They were supposed to send it to GROVER CLEVELAND and JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. What was on the FAX?"

"Um. Well, sir, I'm sure that they sent it, but I wasn't here so I don't know anything about it for sure," I said. Then I spied the piece of paper Mrs. B had passed me earlier and noted that the name on it was none other than GROVER CLEVELAND.

"Oh, sir. I do actually have a message for you here. Mrs. A said we're supposed to give you the phone number for Mr. CLEVELAND..."

"No, I don't want THAT right now! I have to know what I said in the FAX to JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

I should mention, Mr. Kreskin has no grasp of modern technology. I think his hold on all things "hi-tech" let go sometime around 1987. So while he knows that such things as FAX machines, the internet and e-mail exist, he can't distinguish between them with any degree of reliability and thus hates them all. For all I knew, he could have been talking about an e-mail he had them send for him.

"Um. Well, like I said, sir, there doesn't seem to be any FAXes here for JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

"It has to be there somewhere!" Mr. Kreskin said, anger rising in his voice. "They were supposed to send it this morning."

I quickly leafed through the considerable stack of papers on the circulation desk. Off to one side was a set of papers that looked like they might have been sent as a FAX. However, they were addressed to our librarian Mrs. A and not JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. One of the FAX cover-sheet pages did mention GROVER CLEVELAND, again, but not COOPER. I put Mr. Kreskin on hold while I searched through these for him, but still came up dry on any COOPER related material. Mrs. B also knew nothing about it, and she had been there all morning.

I was getting more frustrated by the whole matter. I knew Mr. Kreskin was going to be pissed, not at me but at Mrs. A and Mrs. C who he would somehow blame not only for not being there when he was calling for them in the first place but also for not keeping their staff appraised on his every potential whim so that we'd be prepared to answer all of his questions.

This is hardly the first time we've been through a situation like this with Mr. Kreskin. He once made Mrs. B call a conference center, where Mrs. A and Mrs. C were attending a "liberry" association meeting, so she could ask them what our tax ID number was. From what I understand, Mr. Kreskin has no real business having it in the first place and it was precisely the sort of information that could have and should have waited til the librarians returned home, but that's not how Mr. Kreskin's mind works. Once he gets it in his bonnet that he HAS to know something, whether he actually does HAVE to know it or not, he will not rest until he KNOWS it and he becomes progressively angrier the longer he doesn't. Once he finds out what he wants to know, he usually apologizes to everyone whose fingers he stepped on in the process of getting it, but that's of no consequence while your fingers are being stepped on.

"I'm sorry, sir," I said coming back to the phone. "But I STILL don't have any FAXes here for JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

"Listen," Mr. Kreskin said, as though talking to a child. "You go over to the FAX machine and pull out the drawer. There's got to be a copy in there."

"The drawer?"

"Sure. There's a drawer... It has to keep copies of what it sends, right?"

"Uh... No, sir. It doesn't."

"Yes..."

"No," I said. "That's not how our FAX machine works, sir. There's no drawer."

"Well. With the state of modern technology these days, I'm very disappointed. It should be able to do that."

Mr. Kreskin hemmed and hawed a bit more and told me to try and call Mrs. A and Mrs. C on the "liberry" cell phone, which I readily agreed to do. I assured him that I would continue to look for his FAX and he said he would call back in half an hour to see what I'd found.

I called the library cell phone and left a message for Mrs. A pleading for help. Then went to the filing cabinet and began rifling through it. I'd never had to do this before, but I'd heard a rumor that Mrs. A kept a file of all of Mr. Kreskin's letters for just this sort of situation. Sure enough, with only a little digging, I came up with an enormous file labeled KRESKIN CORRESPONDENCE. It was full of what looked like old letters, FAXes and e-mails. (Mr. Kreskin get's royally pissed if you don't keep a hard copy of any e-mails, even though he never sends any himself. He can't stand the idea of storing anything electronically.) There at the top of the file, bright and fresh with today's date on it was a stapled series of FAXes. Turns out, it was the VERY same FAX addressed to Mrs. A that I'd had on the desk, only these had additional cover sheets attached with a note in from Mr. Kreskin, in Mrs. C's handwriting, to the recipients, including GROVER CLEVELAND and JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. Eureka!

From the note itself, I couldn't see why Mr. Kreskin was so desperate to know what it said. It was the standard, "Hey, look these over, I'm available if you have any questions," kind of note. And now that I had a chance to look at the FAX itself, it too was pretty damned low-priority. It wasn't like this was a ransom note that had to be paid today. It was something that didn't matter a hill of beans if it got dealt with now or in a week.

I called Mr. Kreskin back, but got his answering machine.  So I left the contents of the cover-sheet on Mr. Kreskin's answering machine, knowing this would be futile because he never EVER checks messages. He didn't. At around 5:30, he gave me a call and we sorted out the FAX matter over the phone.  Get this, though... Mr. Kreskin didn't even really want what to know what his note on the cover sheet said in the first place. He only wanted to confirm that BOTH pages of the FAX itself had been sent. AND he already had a copy of the document there at his house just to confirm the wording on both pages to make sure they'd both been sent. Once again, checking behind us in triplicate.

To Mr. Kreskin's credit, he did apologize for stepping on my fingers in all this and said I was a good man for locating what he needed. He knew it probably wasn't easy. He also decided that I'd probably better give him GROVER CLEVELAND's phone number from the note after all.

Mrs. A and Mrs. C arrived from their meeting shortly after this. They were astonished and angry at what Mr. Kreskin had done, particularly since they had already twice gone over with him all of the specifics that he was calling to confirm, not to mention had told him that they would be out at a meeting all afternoon. Mrs. A also confirmed that the FAX was nothing earth-shattering that such a stink needed to be raised over. They were very happy with how I'd handled it, though.

My guess is, the board of directors will soon be approving funds to buy us a new FAX machine. One with a drawer that keeps hard copies.