It's not Delivery, it's... well, okay, it IS Delivery (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 4)

Any week devoted to tales of "good" patrons must include my favorite patron family of all time, the Asners.

Yep, no sooner had I issued myself the challenge of chronicling the nice folk who visit us than we were paid a visit by Ma Asner and her middle daughter. They approached the desk and politely, silently, waited for me to finish helping another patron. When at last I was able to turn to them, the daughter smiled and explained that she was selling pizza kits for her school and wondered if I would like to have a look at their catalog.

Now, unlike my personal telemarketer policy, I have a personal school-sales policy of buying from one out of every two kids who come to my door to sell me something. (I think they're catching on, cause they keep coming in pairs.) I spent too much time going door to door myself as a yout' to become the cranky, cheap-ass neighbor every one hates. (Plus, I probably still owe the March of Dimes money.) However, it's one thing to be kind and generous to neighborhood kids, but buying stuff at a workplace as public as mine is very dangerous. You get a reputation for buying fund-raising stuff there and suddenly you're overrun with kids selling $5 Hershey Bars and $8 popcorn balls.

However, because young Miss Asner was the one who asked and because I'm still charmed by all those times she said "God bless you" with her sisters as they departed the building, I readily accepted her catalog and spent $33 on pizza and breadstick 3-pack kits. Miss Asner was overjoyed and promised delivery to me within a few weeks.

Tales of the Good Patrons

I expend a lot of effort in chronicling the really annoying patrons we get. Let me tell you about some of my good patrons. In fact, I think I like this family of patrons nearly as much as my previous favorites, the Asners. Lets call them, the Hatchers, after the family from Judy Blume’s Fudge series. It’s an apt moniker because the parallels I see between the fictional Hatchers and their real life counterparts are just amazing.

So far I’ve only met Mom Hatcher and her two sons—tah dahhhh!—Peter and Fudge. They come in almost every Wednesday, around 6 p.m. to turn in their old books and look for new ones. Mom Hatcher doesn’t really resemble the illustrations of the Hatcher mom from Blume’s books, but her kids are dead ringers.

Peter is the older of the two boys, but he hasn’t quite made 4th grade yet. I’d say he’s probably a first or second grader. He still likes the Easy Reader books, though he's begun looking into chapter books a bit more. (And as soon as I can manage it, I’m going to press a copy of Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing into his mitts and tell him to keep any turtles he might own under heavy guard.) Mostly Peter wants any book that's about really big trucks or tractors or fire engines and he often likes to check out books about them that he's had before. In this, he usually needs my help.

Peter comes up to the desk, steps up on our step-stool and waits politely for me to finish whatever it is that I'm doing and ask him if he needs help. Only then will he tell me what he's after. He never knows exactly where the books are found on the shelf, nor their title, but usually knows which floor they're on, what they look like, what they were about and about what size of a book they are. This might not seem much to go on, but I can usually track them down pretty quick from this. (According to his mom, Peter's quite impressed at my ability to do this.)

My one beef with Peter, and it's not a big one, is that every time he leaves I can go into the children's room and find at least one entire row of books pushed all the way back on their shelf. Like most libraries, we like to keep our books flush with the front of the shelf they're on. I've found that many children cannot abide this and will push as many books back as they can reach, making work for us to readjust them later. Peter isn't real bad about it, though. Unlike some kids, he doesn't do the whole room. He just pushes back a given row of books on a given shelf, a different row and shelf each time. I've talked to co-workers about this and it's our feeling that he thinks he's doing us a favor, so we can't exactly get mad at him.

Peter's little brother Fudge is a four year old and is quite the bundle of energy. He doesn't run around screaming like a sugar-gorged Baboon like some kids we've had in, but like most four year olds he's very interested in his surroundings and likes coming to the library to "buy" books. A few weeks back, Fudge became entranced by the kid-sized umbrella in our children's room. This year's Summer Reading program had a water theme, so we set up a kiddie pool (sans water) and a tiny little double beach chair in the children's room that had its own tiny beach umbrella. Fudge loved the umbrella. He came up to the desk right away and stepped up on the kiddie steps to ask me about it.

"Esscuse me, but can Iyyyye take the li'l kids umbrellllla an' put it on my heaaad?"

"You want to put the umbrella on your head?" I said.

"Yeaaah."

"It’s okay with me, kid. Go crazy."

I never did see Fudge put the umbrella on his head, but I could just imagine him trying to balance the handle atop his skull, pretending he was Inspector Gadget or something. (And I, of course, never did that as a child, myself.)

On their way out, though, I thought Fudge was going to go into a crying tantrum when he learned that he couldn't check out the umbrella. He kept pleading with his mom that he wanted to "take the li'l kids umbrelllllla hoooome." I tried to explain to him that it didn't have a barcode on it so I couldn't check it out to him, but this hardly mattered to Fudge. Finally, Mrs. Hatcher diffused the situation by telling Fudge that she would buy him his own little kids umbrella next time they went to Wal-Mart. That seemed to satisfy him, though he immediately began asking if they could go to Wal-Mart "right noooow."

When the three of them reached the front door, Peter opened it to go out.

"AHHHHHHHH! I WANTED TO OPEN IT!!!" Fudge screamed, his little arms flapping in frustration.

"Well, okay. You can open it, then," Mom said.

I think Mom's terribly embarrassed at Fudge's behavior, but he's far far far from being a problem in my book.

The following week, Mrs. Hatcher and Peter came in alone. As they were leaving, Mrs. Hatcher said, "Fudge's with his grandmother tonight, so we're much less trouble." I assured her they were never trouble.

"Did Fudge get his umbrella?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! He got a Bob the Builder umbrella. He loves it. He opens it and closes it and opens it and closes it and opens it. Usually in the house."

I hope when the wife and I get around to grumping out a couple of critters ourselves, we have nice ones like Peter and Fudge, or better yet like The Asners. In fact, I was just telling the wife the other day, "When we have kids, we should try to have some nice quiet ones."

"Oh, no. Your babies are going to be LOUD," she said.

"But, couldn't we just tell the doctor that we don't want loud children and he's only to deliver quiet ones?"

"No."

"How bout this. Why don't we just go take a couple of the Asners's kids? We could leave them a note saying that we wanted nice quiet kids and since they have so many we didn't think they would mind? Huh? And we could include a note that said `In exchange, we're leaving you this cranky old cat that hates everybody. Enjoy.' Think that would work?"

"No."

Now that's EVEN MORE Monday for your ass!

The rest of my Monday went pretty typically for a Monday, which is to say bursts of chaos followed by periods of downtime, punctuated by incessant phones ringing with caller after caller saying either "What time do you close?" or "Can I renew my books?" or "Is Mrs. C/Mrs. A there?" I knew that was going to happen. Every single time Mrs. A goes out of town, the world comes apart with people who seem to think their butts are going to implode if they don't speak with her right this very minute. When Mrs. A's not in, they'll settle for Mrs. C. But Mrs. C was out of town too and Mrs. A is on the other side of the country on vacation at the moment. So I got to hear the sound of several asses imploding throughout the day. The truly frustrating thing is that most of the people who call to ask to speak to A or C know good and damn well neither are in. As soon as you say it, they tell you, "Oh, yeah. I knew that." Then why did you bother to call?

I also had to interrupt making copies for a needy patron to answer a call from a guy who said, "Do you know the number to the DMV? I tried looking it up in the phone book but I couldn't find it."

"No, I don't know the number to the DMV," I said, deciding not to point out to him that we were a library and NOT directory service and therefore should not be expected to know such things. Story of my life, really. When I worked in radio people called for even goofier numbers than that. Somehow if you're in mass media or library work you're considered a depository of knowledge to be consulted at whim and leisure.

I tried looking up the DMV's number for the guy in the phone book myself, trying the WV STATE LISTINGS section and giving him a play by play of my phone-book. In the guy's defense, the DMV seems to have gone out of its way to remain unlisted. All I could find was an 800 number for a statewide line where anyone calling it had about as much hope of speaking to a real person as I did calling my bank this morning.

At 4:30 I started trying to get my closing duties taken care of, calling the holds, counting the till, trash taking, etc. But I couldn't count the till. Mabel the Amateur genealogist was still back on the computer, printing out dozens of pages that at .10 a pop were going to become a factor in my end of the day tallying. Why bother to count the money in the cash box when I'd just have to make change with it for Mabel's prints, destroying my count and making me have to do math?

At 4:56 the last wave of patrons began. Like I said, none of them are aware of our Monday 1-5 p hours despite their decade long existence, so 5 O'Clock is no reason for them to slow down. Fortunately, most of the people who walked through the door at 4:56 were with my favorite patrons, the Asner family. I whispered to them that we were about to close, but gave em free reign to go find some books quickly. Right on their heels, at 4:59, was a couple I'd not seen before, returning their books. I've dubbed them Mr. and Mrs. Thrill. After dropping the books on the desk, they began slowly meandering around the room in browse-mode.

"Uh, just to let you know we're closing in about one minute," I said.

The man gave me a deeply dirty look and said, "Whuut?"

"We close at 5 on Mondays," I said. "You're welcome to look around quickly and find something, if you like," I added--after all, I had a children's room full of Asner kids who weren't exactly rushing. The man wasn't happy about this, though. His dirty look got even dingier, bordering on and then crossing over into insulted.

"That ain't no good. People don't get off work til fiiiive," he said.

"I understand, sir. That's why we only close at five on Monday. The rest of the week we're open til 7, but we do close at 5 on Monday."

This didn't help. His wife, meanwhile, was in a tizzy-panic trying to decide what to look for in the ten whole seconds I'd allotted her to find a book. After the inner egg-timer in her head dinged off, she turned to her husband and threw up her hands in defeat.

"Pick you something out," he said.

"But, I don't... I... They... They're closed," she said.

"Go on and pick you something out," he told her, but she was too far gone to even try. "We ain't coming back," he told her on their way out the door. Hmm. Our loss.

After the Asners had gone at 5:05, it took another 10 minutes to close the rest of the joint down. I half expected patrons to continue pounding on the door to get in, but there was nary a knock.

Got home to find out Ice.com has canceled the order of pendants that our smarmy CAsshole made with our card. They're also crediting our account the amount they'd charged, so it looks as though we won't have to contest anything. We'll just have to file the police report and hope their brethren in San Diego can figure out what's going on and hopefully prosecute whoever did it.

We're still not sure how they got the credit card number in the first place. Ash had used it on-line early the morning of the new mystery purchases, but the site she used it at was a secure one. We're thinking she may have gotten an e-mail worm virus that could have spied it and mailed it on. So now we're having to erase and reinstall her laptop to try and get rid of any creepy crawlies.

Best Patrons EVER

I spend a lot of time here telling tales about the worst patrons who visit the "liberry" and writing up Rogues Gallery lists for them, but I've not spent much time on the best patrons.

If I were to write a Best Patrons EVER list, the Asners (not their real name) would be at the top of the list. Unlike some families who frequent the library (such as the Fagins--which is not their real name, though I shouldn't care if I wrote their real name here as we have documented proof of their many years of treachery and theft), the Asner's are simply wonderful, wonderful patrons.

Mr. and Mrs. Asner have five or six kids, (they're hard to count because they're never all in at once, though frankly we wouldn't mind if they were). These kids must come from some kind of angelic genetic stock, cause they're all just the best-behaved, most polite, loving, cherubic, bright and beautiful children you'd ever care to know. Most of them are probably around year or two apart in age, ranging from, I'm guessing, 12 down to 2 (and the youngest is, in fact, the Cutest Baby in all the World, bar none). They're always just quiet and helpful and polite and everything you could ever wish for in children. I've never seen them angry or even a little upset. I've never seen them sad or crying. They obey their parents without question, with nary a tantrum if the don't get to check out something they want. I think I can say with full conviction that the Asner kids are the best children I've ever encountered. They're just a joy. I've told Mrs. Asner exactly that.

And better patrons have yet to be born! Most patron families of their size load up each and every child's card with the full limit in books and videos, which makes for a freakin' long checkout time and check in time, should they return with all they borrowed, which they never do. The cards of most families of that size are a tangle of overdues and even blocked patron records due to unreturned books from decades past (See: The Fagins). Not so with the Asners. They're a librarian's fantasy come to life. They never take more than they need in books or videos, almost always less than half the 10 item limit, and they always bring them back well before the due date or call to renew. There's never a fine to be seen or a lost book unfound. And they read quality stuff. Even the little ones, who love the Magic School Bus series and Winn!e the P00h, but never get mindless pap like Barn3y or T3letubbies.

I don't know how Mr. & Mrs. Asner managed to do it, but I know their house is a loving one.

And it's been something of a family tradition that as they reach the front door to depart, the Asner girls almost always turn around and sweetly tell us, "God bless you" before leaving. (They even say it on their answering machine.)

Now I know this sounds like a very Ned Flandersy sort of family, but it SO does not come off like that at all in person. It's utterly genuine. And for me, a guy who has to suffer through bitter patron after bitter patron (some of whom are the grumpiest people in all the world), the Asners are refreshing.

As to the Asner's secret behind their amazing family-skills, I firmly believe it lies somewhere in their daughter's parting quote.