So, what's the police response code for a "domestic" at the "liberry"?

After all the other employees had left for the day, I was on the remaining two solo hours of a closing shift when I received a phone call. It was a man who asked directions on how to get to the "liberry." Ah, a regular, I surmised. So I gave him directions and he arrived shortly in company of a woman I took to be his wife.

As I suspected would be the case, I'd not seen either of them before and while they were both quiet enough I got an odd vibe off of the man. Of course, I am automatically suspicious of most "liberry" neophytes who set foot in the building only on the rare occasion that they need something from us. I wasn't sure at first what this fellow needed from us, other than a computer. He `netted for a bit before printing off some Mapquest directions, which he paid for. Instead of departing immediately, though, he and his wife went into the nonfiction stacks.

Twenty minutes later, I was doing a bit of net surfing of my own when peripherally I saw the two of them walk by the desk and make for the foyer to exit. As soon as they stepped into the foyer, however, the man gave an angry shout and then there was a loud crash as the two of them burst through the front door. I looked up instantly, but could only see movement through the glass of the front door as the couple disappeared into the darkness of the parking lot beyond.

Aw, hell, I thought. We've got a domestic dispute on our hands.

I ran around the circ desk and toward the front door, fully expecting to find the man beating his wife on our front walk. If he was, I wouldn't be able to allow this to happen and would have to get involved in it and probably get punched in the face for my trouble. The best I could hope for would be to catch him off guard, leap on him, bring him down by sheer weight alone and somehow pin him to the ground with my notoriously non-existent wrestling skills. Maybe I could dial 911 on my cell phone before being rendered unconscious?

Only when I burst through the front doors, myself, the couple was nowhere to be seen. It had only taken me maybe three seconds to get outside. There had been no time for them to even get to a car, let alone drive away. I looked around, but other than two members of the New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, who'd been in the library earlier and were now standing calmly at the edge of the front walk, there were no other humans to be seen.

"Can I help you?" the taller of the kids asked after several seconds of me standing there looking around for the man.

"What's going on?" I asked, thinking they could direct me to where the man and wife had vanished to.

"We were just messing around," the kid replied.

And then I realized that it had not been the man and wife who I'd peripherally seen before; it had been the two kids all along.

"Oh," I said. "You're not who I thought you were," I added. I then went back into the building where all the computer patrons stared at me like I was a dumbass for not realizing what was going on the whole time. Or maybe they were mad I didn't put the smackdown on the kids for disturbing their precious innanetting time with their shouting and bursting of doors.

The real man and wife left about five minutes later, happy as two patrons I've never seen before and will likely never see again can be.

And the stars aligned (a.k.a. "The Password STILL is...")

Wow the computers were lousy with Rogues! At one point we had Matilde the Cranky Wiccan, Jimmy the Anonymous Snitch, Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine and three members of The New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids using at the same time. This is even more impressive than last week's Rogue Constellation Alignment when Mr. Big Stupid and Mr. Little Stupid were both using at the same time.

As usual, the League of Kids descended on us in a clump to sign up for computers. I went out and logged them onto the second, third and fourth computers on one side of the computer bank, skipping the first one, a 15-minute station that I'd logged off not five minutes before. I then returned to the sign in clip-board to mark which computers I'd placed them on and make sure they'd listed their sign on times. When I turned `round again, though, I noticed that one of the kids was seated at the 15-minute station and had its desktop loaded up and everything.

Dammit! They knew the passwords AGAIN!

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a difficult password to hack, especially considering it was actually the old password that the League already knew. With all the recent computer installation and printer and password issues that have been going on, we finally got the tech guys to go in and set all the logins and passwords to the same thing and make the stations all print to the same printer. Only, the tech guys changed all the passwords back to the old old password, the same single letter it had been back before we got them to change all the passwords to my initials. The League all knew the old old password, so here they were again with free access.

Not that it really matters in the grand scheme of things, since the only reason to have passwords—y'know, beyond our whole need to wield power over people and feel all mighty and stuff—is that requiring them forces patrons to come sign in at our clip board, allowing us to both count them as computer users in our stats and to know who signed on when so we'll know who to kick off when.

I busted the kid off the 15 minute station, didn't say anything to him about knowing the password and then went to write a note to Mrs. A explaining the situation.

We've now changed all the passwords, this time to the initials of a staff member other than myself.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #83

Usually when people phone the "liberry" and ask to speak to someone by name, it's one of the staff they're referring to. On the rare occasion that people have phoned to speak to patrons, an explanation of precisely who they want to talk to is given first. Not so with the New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids.

*RING*

ME— Tri Metro County Library.

KID— Yeah, can I speak to Michael?

ME— I'm sorry, no Michael works here.

KID— No, I just need to speak to Michael.

(Pause)

ME— I'm sorry, but there is no Michael employed here.

KID— No. I know he doesn't work there. But he's there. He's on the computer? He's a kid on the computer?

(Long seething pause)

ME— There are no children currently on any of our computers.

KID— But he was supposed to be there.

ME— Well... he's not.

And the password is... (2007)

When it comes to the New Devil Twins and their Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, we rarely encounter any of their parents. The most we usually see from the parents is when they pop their heads in the front door to ask if their kids are on the premesis, almost as if they are afraid of setting actual foot in the building.

Last week, though, the mom of two of the primary League members stopped by, with her kids in tow, to sign up for computers. We only had one available at that point, which I knew because I'd gone back to reboot it some minutes earlier. The other two computers were occupied by a no-name patron and Mr. B-Natural, respectively. I told the mom she and her kids were welcome to use the computer we had.

The eldest son, Mark, signed up and headed on back leaving mom and little brother at the desk. Mom said that her younger son (points to younger son) had told her about some permission form we needed to have her sign in order for him to use the internet on his own and asked for one of those. I forked it over and waited while she started in on it.

"He's not going to be able to look at anything bad, is he?" she asked.

"Well, he'll have access to pretty much anything that's on the internet," I said. "Well, anything that can get past our filter."

"But nothing gets past the filters, right?"

I shrugged. "You'd be surprised. It's pretty good, as filters go, but it's not foolproof."

She gave the boy a long appraising look.

"MooooOOOOoommm! I'm not gonna look at anything bad."

"You better not."

While they were filling out the form, I went back to log on the computer for Mark. Only, when I came around the corner into the computer hall, I saw Mark was already using it to load a webpage. Mark looked up at me and I saw guilt cross his face.

"Now, how exactly did you do that?" I asked him, knowing full well that I had rebooted that computer earlier and that it had returned to our login screen where a password is required to proceed. "You're not supposed to know the password."

"No... I didn't," he said. "I just hit this button, but I didn't know it." He pointed to the single letter that has served as our password for the past few months. Granted, it's no great feat to have paid attention to our hands during the 200 times we've logged him onto a computer in that time, so it's not exactly surprising that he knew it and he's certainly not the first to have mastered that trick. His brazen use of it, however, was a bit off-putting.

"I'm sorry," Mark added.

"Let him tell me what it is," Mr. B-Natural said in a hopeful tone.

I gave Mark a stern yet forgiving look and told him it was okay. Then I left a note to the staff that we need to change the passwords again.

We've now changed the passwords, yet again. At my suggestion, we're going to use a password of multiple letters. Mrs. A then suggested and instantly approved a choice: my three initials.

Immortality is mine!

(Now if we can only convince Mrs. J to stop saying the letters aloud as she types them.)

A-MINUS: 10

Bad Friday

There’s been a nettin’ war brewing between Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine and two members of the New Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids. Actually, it’s really between Gene and anyone who gets in the way of his geneal0gy research. On Friday things began heating up.

Gene must have had the day off for Good Friday, because he settled in fairly early in the morning hoping for a full day of computer time. See, Gene’s learned that despite its DSL speed, our innanet connection slows way down in the afternoon about the time the West Coast crowd kicks into gear. So instead of haunting our computer hall in the afternoon, he’s been trying to come in earlier in the day. Unfortunately, Tony and Delbert, the aforementioned NDTALONK members, also had the day off and nothing better to do than surf the net, so in they came too.

After all three had been on for over half an hour, another patron happened in wanting a computer and Gene had to be busted off since he’d been on the longest. He immediately signed up for another session, causing Tony to be busted for Gene. Tony then signed up for another session, causing Delbert to be busted for Tony. Then Delbert signed up for another session and the cycle began anew. My coworker, Mrs. C, was running the circ desk solo, at that point, for Mrs. B was out for the day, and she rapidly grew tired of having to run back to the computer hall every ten minutes or so to bust someone off in favor of someone who’d already been busted off several times already. She decided she’d had enough and resolved to reinact an obscure bit of library computer policy that hasn’t been enforced in years. Our policy has already been that patrons who sign up for computers are given one half hour’s worth of time, on a first come first served basis, and are not asked to get off unless we have someone else waiting to use the next available computer. The reactivated bit of policy would add that patrons who have already been given a full half hour’s worth of time may sign up for another session, but will only be granted a computer when one becomes available, rather than us busting anyone else off to give them one.

Mrs. C thought this would not only cut down on the number of trips amount we’d be making to the computer hall but it would deter abusers from abusing the system in the first place. I knew this was very very wrong. What it would do is give Gene more than enough excuse to sit around the circ desk, yammering on about his damned relatives to anyone who would stand still long enough while he waited for the next computer to open up. This is far more torturous than having to run back and bust people off every few minutes, but with the new policy addition effectively ties the staff’s hands in getting rid of him. (And on that note, I’ve been lobbying for the purchase of a Geneal0gy Taser, to be used on any geneal0gy researchers who attempt to tell us about their research--which would be all of them.)

By the time I arrived at work, Gene and the boys had been told of our revised policy. Mrs. C and Mrs. A then told me about the policy and about how Gene and the boys had been told as well. Then they make a fast break for lunch, leaving me solo. Sure enough, within minutes someone else came in for a computer and I had to go bust Gene off for them. Gene knew that the boys were both past their half hour limit too, so he ran to sign up for another session, no doubt in the hopes I hadn’t been told about the policy.

“That boy on the first computer is out of time,” Gene said, helpfully as he signed up anew.

I ignored him and went back to typing spine labels. I kept my back to Gene and made no eye contact, lest it give him an opening to talk about his relatives. The more I typed, though, the more something about the policy bugged me. I can understand not busting new computer patrons (Tier 1) off in favor of ones who’ve already had their half hour (Tier 2), but what about patrons who’ve already had more than their share of time, such as Delbert and Tony? My brain rationalized that it seemed unfair to allow them to remain on the computers while other Tier 2 patrons such as Gene had to wait. To me, it seemed fair that once a patron became a Tier 2, they could effectively compete with other Tier 2 patrons for computer time, but not with Tier 1s. I didn’t much want any of them in the building, but it seemed far less dangerous to have Tony & Delbert busted off than to have a bored and conversation-starved Gene lurking around the desk.

After a few more minutes, I went back and told Tony someone was waiting for a computer. Tony logged off, then came to the desk and complained that Delbert was actually next in line to be busted off.

“Fine,” I said, and went back and told Delbert he had to get off too. Tony & Delbert were confused as to what this meant and what they were to do next, so they both wound up leaving instead of Tony taking one of the two free computers. I gave one of them to Gene, who then managed to stay on it for at least the next four hours.

I still don't think this policy adjustment is going to work. Meanwhile, I'm comparison pricing tasers.

Nonactual Conversations Not Actually Heard in any Libraries #74

THE DUFUS— Hey, guys, look... it’s a beautiful sunny day!

GENE GENE THE GENEAL0GY MACHINE— Sure is. In fact, it’s the first day in over two months that it’s not snowing, raining, windy or otherwise cold as ass. I even saw Fatty Manchild wearing a pair of 80's style jam shorts.

MR. B-NATURAL— That's all that piece of crap ever wears.

GENE— Oh, yeah.

DUFUS— Anyway, since it's such a nice day, what say we go for a picnic?

(long silence)

DUFUS— Just kidding. Let's head down to the “liberry” for several hours of innanet time, instead.

BRENT & BRICE: THE NEW DEVIL TWINS— Yayyyy!

GENE— I don’t know, guys. I saw an awful lot of cars out front. I think it’s probably pretty busy in there. It is Friday.

DUFUS— So we’re supposed to just sit by while other people use the innanet? That shit is ours by right!

GENE— You have a point. Okay, I'm in. But only if we all sign up at once.

DUFUS— Of course we’re all going to sign up at once.

MR. B-NATURAL— And I’m not going unless I can get all cranky about having to wait 15 whole minutes. Then I'll demand the Wall$treet Journal, leaf through it at the circulation desk, in the way of God and everybody, until I find the cr0ssw0rd puzzle, which I'll then demand the staff photocopy for me. Then I'm going to stand at the circ desk and grunt and growl and do my puzzle until the staff are crazed and on the verge of kicking me in the junk. And every time any of the staff go back to log on one of the two people waiting ahead of me, I'll assume they're doing it for me and follow them back, then growl some more when it's not for me after all.

DUFUS— Sure thing.

GENE— I'll sign up last so I can have plenty of time to sit around the main room and torment the staff, too. I'll tell them long-winded stories about each and every one of my ancestors that I've been able to find geneal0gy records for. Like my Great Uncle Stan, who once worked for a guy who sold tools to a man who worked as a mechanic for a crop dusting pilot until he got an infected hangnail and had to go on unemployment—that’s my uncle, mind you, not the crop duster. Except they didn’t have unemployment back then, so he just died, leaving a wife and nineteen kids, each of whom was a fascinating character on their own. Like his daughter Loofie, who…

MR. B-NATURAL— God, shut him up before I sic my dog on him!!!

DUFUS— Um, Gene, how `bout saving it for the library, huh? I mean, I'm all about the name-dropping myself, but damn.

BRICE— What about me? I’m still banned from using a computer until I pay for that book I lost.

BRENT— Hah! I paid my fines off, so I can use a computer again! You know, after waiting 20 or 30 minutes for my turn, and all. I'm gonna MySpace like there's no tomorrow! In your face!

DEVIL TWIN AUXILLIARY MEMBER TONY— I’m going to sign up for a computer too! They still let me use them even though I stole $20 from the cashbox that one time. In your face twice, Brice!

MR. B-NATURAL— What, are you kids green or something? No, Brice, listen. Just sign up for a computer anyway. The staff can never tell you and Brent apart, even though one of you is clearly a head taller than the other. And even if they catch on, they’ll just be pissed off you had the sac to try and sign up again after all the times they've told you were banned because of fines. It's win-win!

BRICE— I know, I’ll sign up with my middle name. Then they might think we have a third brother.

MR. B-NATURAL— That's the idea! You're catching on, now.

TONY— Yeah, and if they do call you on it, I’ll help run interference by signing up for computers repeatedly throughout the afternoon, often returning to the desk to sign up again before my time has even run out. You’ll always have a shoulder to look over.

MR. B-NATURAL— Oh, that’ll squeeze a Cleveland Steamer in their Wheaties real good! The only thing that could make it better is if you tried to sneak some coffee back, too.

GENE— And because the staff will quickly learn to avoid me, as though I were coated in dog feces, I'll lie in wait for them in other rooms, jumping out to tell them about all the lists of my relatives I wasn't able to get the computers to print properly last time and to show them the many lists I was able to print. Like this one that has my uncle Stan's daughter Loofie's name on it. I remember that my grandmother once told me about this time when Loofie stumped her toe on the edge of the tub and...

DUFUS— Gene!!! You know I love ya, guy, but I swear to God I'm going to hit you throat with a rolled up New Y0rker if you don't shut the hell up! In fact, when we get to the library, I'm going to wait for my computer far away from you. I'll go upstairs, where I can flip through Newsweek's entertainment section and catch up on all the people I used to be close personal friends of back when I was a demi-god in California. I'll flip from page to page and sigh longingly. And, every now and then, I'll look up to watch that exceptionally slow staff member as she takes the better part of three hours to put new spine labels on only a couple of dozen books.

RANDOM MALE PATRON— I’m just going to come in repeatedly over the course of the entire afternoon and act all impatient and give the staff dirty looks that there aren’t any computers free. I won’t actually sign up for one and wait my turn, of course, but will instead leave for half an hour and come back to do it all again.

MR. B-NATURAL— Also a very good tactic.

THE COOT— I don't care about no compooter gigitygatchets. I'm going to set up shop outside the noisy lady's office, slouched waaay down in the chair until my legs block the entire walkway. And I'm going to grunt and sing and fart all the live long day.

DUFUS— Knock yourself out.

THE COOT— *FAAAART*

(Twenty minutes to an hour later)

DUFUS— Hey, this keyboard has flaky white stuff in the keys. What gives?

CRUSTY THE PATRON— Oh, sorry. That was me. I was in for several hours before you arrived and got booted from computer to computer, so they're all pretty much contaminated with my buttery, flaky, beard crust.

EVERYONE— Ewwwwwwww!

(While the above dialogue is fiction, the events described pretty much went down exactly like that.)

Auxiliary Trouble (or "Ms. S finally gets one right")

My once-a-month Monday shift went pretty smoothly, yesterday. The only real incident I had came with a 4p arrival of Brent & Brice: The New Devil Twins.

I've not seen much of the Devil Twins in a while, particularly after all the confusion we had with them back in June, during which we finally learned which of them was which and that, while they are brothers, they aren't actually twins in the first place. In the intervening months, Brice—the shorter brother, whose patron record fines tab was the far scarier of the two—actually brought all his books back or otherwise paid his fines, so he's been allowed to use the computers again. Brent, the taller one, still has a LOOOOONG overdue book out and is still therefore banned from computer usage. This fact, however, didn't stop him from signing up for a computer in front of me, God and everybody when the two of them walked in Monday afternoon.

I didn't have computers for either of them at the time, so I sent them away to wait while I double checked both of their patron records to make sure at least one was still in Dutch with us. Yep. Brent still owes $60 in fines and/or book replacement fees. So I went back and broke the news to him that I couldn't let him use the computer until that was taken care of. He tried to act surprised about it, but I don't think his heart was really in his performance.

Jump to today.

Not long after I arrived, Mrs. C mentioned that the twins had been on scene during another incident over the weekend. She said that on Sunday she received a phone at home from infamous Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S, our weekend warrior womanning the desk. It seems that Brent & Brice were in the "liberry" along with two members of the Brent & Brice Auxiliary League of Neighborhood kids. (Of course, they were all using computers since Ms. S didn't remember that there were any banning issues involved.) At some point during their visit, Ms. S had gone upstairs to drop off some nonfiction and when she returned downstairs she spotted a member of the League—a 10 or 11 year old kid who I'll call Tony—behind the circ-desk. Tony saw that he'd been spotted, for Ms. S said they locked eyes, and he zipped from behind the desk. When confronted as to why he was behind the desk, he claimed he was trying to find a pen with which to sign up for a computer. (Because the can of pens RIGHT BEHIND the computer sign in sheet wasn't obvious enough, eh?)

Now, the thing you have to remember about Ms. S is that she's terified of our cash box and the possibility that she might somehow miscount it by three cents and get brought up on charges. We've tried to explain to her that as long as the count isn't wildly off, it's all right and that miscalculations happen. She remains in fear of the box. Also, being a very very slow human being in both mind and body, she likes to do the end-of-the-day cash count as early in her shift as she can get away with so she'll have plenty of time to count and recount and recount should something come up wrong. And, since we close at 5 on Sundays, she'd already done the cash count some time between 3:30 and 4p. Luckily, this meant she was already aware that there had been a $20 bill in the cash box, the very bill which she saw was missing following Tony's visit behind the circ-desk.

"What do I do?" she asked Mrs. C.

"I'll be there in a minute," Mrs. C told her.

Minutes later, Mrs. C arrived and the kids were all still in-house. Ms. S pointed her to Tony and Mrs. C asked to speak to him in private. She explained to Tony that Ms. S had seen him behind the desk, that he was NOT supposed to BE behind the desk and, while we were not going so far as to accuse him yet, we were now aware that there was a $20 bill missing from the cash box. Had he taken it? Tony claimed he had not taken it and reiterated that he was looking for a pen.

"In that case, is your mom home?" Mrs. C asked.

"Yeah."

"Would you call her for me?"

"Yeah."

Tony dialed, but said the number was busy. So Mrs. C passed the time by talking to Brent & Brice and the other League member present, alerting them to the situation and asking if they knew anything about it? They said they didn't and recommended she call Tony's mom again. So Mrs. C had Tony phone home again, got through this time and reached mom. Mrs. C explained the situation to Tony's mom, stressing again that we weren't accusing him but that evidence did seem to point in his direction. Tony's mom said that she'd never known him to steal, but that there was always a first time for it. She agreed to deal with the matter and return the money should she find it. Then, she asked to speak to Tony and, from his growing petrified expression, apparently gave him the what for.

Mrs. C was relieved. Ms. S was even more relieved.

Jump back to this morning. Mrs. J, our sexagenarian "liberry" ass., was straightening up around our restroom and noticed a $20 bill behind the trash can. So it would appear that Tony, knowing Ms. S had seen him, ditched the money rather than get caught with it.

We don't, at this point, know Tony's phone number to call his mom back and let her know, but that will be easy enough to find out. My suggestion, in the meantime, is that we put a little note behind the trash can that reads:

Dear Tony,

So sorry, but we're afraid what you came to look for is no longer here.

XXOO
--the staff
p.s.-- you're banned.

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.