The trip home

On our way back, we passed through Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, and stopped for the night near Louisville. We stayed at a Red Carpet Inn of the sort that's just this shy of scary, but you can tell that it was probably very scary not long ago before they refurbished the whole place with new stuff. It wasn't ideal, but it was cheap. That night we dined on ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery and watched The Fountain. (My review: it was a beautiful, strange film that I was completely enthralled with until the very last scene, at which point there was an ending that was not nearly as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be. This was the same feeling I had after seeing 12 Monkeys. Still, like 12 Monkeys, it's one of those movies that sticks in your brain and I've since come to terms with it a bit more, even if it didn't end ideally.)

The next morning, Ash wanted to look for bead stores. There was no phone book in the room, so I walked across the parking lot to the little lobby building and asked the lady at the desk if she had one.

"No, we can't keep them in the building," she said. "They just walk off."

While I was there, I stepped into the next room of the building and picked up some complimentary coffee and doughnuts and returned to our room. Around two minutes later, there was a loud screeching of tires and I saw a maroonish SUV speeding out of the parking lot. I wondered briefly if it had just been stolen. Later, when we went to check out, the lobby door was locked and the lady inside waved us over to an after hours window made of thick glass.

"I'm sorry," she said in unexcited even tones. "We've just had an altercation here and I can't let you in." In other words, they'd just been robbed, most likely by the people who sped off two minutes after I'd returned. Had I been two minutes later going for a phone book, I might have been caught in the middle of an armed robbery.

Little Known Facts about Missouri

We're back from our Thanksgiving roadtrip, a little heavier than when we began it. For the most part, things went well--turkey was eaten, naps were taken, small children entertained, pink eye was defeated, arguments argued (though only small ones), small angry dogs were infuriated and I was only sick for a day of it, having picked up a cold on Monday that by Thursday became a raging nose-clogger. Zicam is wonderful stuff, though, so the ill effects lasted only a short time. (By the way, I recommend taking Zicam but only in melt-on-your-tongue-pill form. The nasal gel is just evil evil stuff that causes your synuses to burn horribly and your voice apt to whine.) It was great visiting with family, some of whom I haven't seen for a couple of years now.

During our trip, we observed a few things that we'd not noticed before about Missouri.

For instance, did you know that Missouri not only had enough money in its highway repair coffers to fix all the massive potholes along the section of I-55 that I complained about two years ago, but they also had enough left to plant a nice shiny mile marker at every 1/10 of a mile? That's right, whereas most interstate highways have mile markers placed at a rate of, y'know, one per mile, Missouri I-55 has ten of them per mile. My best guess is that this was to help the towtrucks locate all those drivers who'd lost their front axles after plowing into a pothole at 80 mph, a couple years back, but I don't really know the real reason. It still seems excessive, not to mention taxpayer-money-sapping.

Also, did you know that it's apparently illegal for people in Missouri to be nonsmokers? Yep, pretty much every person in the state smokes a couple packs a day on either a first or secondhand basis. It's worse than North Carolina. Now, granted, I'm a nonsmoker, though not really an obnoxious militant one, yet. And I'm also probably spoiled because I live in a community where smoking inside of buildings within the city limits has been banned in nearly all cases except for private residences; so I can go for weeks at a time without smelling cigarette smoke. Even so, I never really thought about how nice it is to live in that sort of atmophere until heading to Missouri, where non-smokers in restaurants are clearly in the minority. We went out to breakfast with my parents every day we were there and without fail the smoker to nonsmoker ratio was wildly skewed toward the smokers. We even began taking bets on the number of people smoking we'd find in any given establishment and we always underestimated. By the time we left the state, we and our clothes smelled pretty much like the impacted anal glands of a cigarette butt and we were quite unhappy about it.

Also, did you know that in Missouri, they don't stuff the turkey with dressing at Thanksgiving, but instead use a mixture of raw cotton and crystal meth? Okay, well, our family doesn't, but I'm pretty sure there's some of that going on around there. Probably some cigarettes in there too.

Outta here

Since I'm not at the "liberry" at all this week, due to a variety of things, not the least of which is our Thanksgiving sojourn to Missouri, I'm taking the week off.

See ya back here on Nov 27.

And Happy Turkey Day!

Year Three in the Can

Today is the third anniversary of the beginning of this blog.

Whoo, and might I add, hoo.

Crab's Complaint

I was working the desk during story hour, today, when Mr. Crab, third grumpiest old man in all the world, habitual forgetter of his "liberry" card, and a man quite unafraid to mention that he's a $200 annual "liberry" donor, scuttled in.

I was glad he visited during story hour, because it meant Mrs. B and Mrs. C were otherwise engaged. So when Mr. Crab came to the desk with books to check out and then didn't have his "liberry" card, he would have to deal with me. Last time, and despite all good sense otherwise, Mrs. B let him get away with checking the books out on her card. This would not be happening on my watch. I imagined he'd wail and gnash and threaten to withhold his $200 annual donation from us, as usual, but it would do him no good. I would quote "liberry" consortium policy to him, shrug my shoulders in mock sympathy and then offer to hold his books at the desk until such a time as he could remember to bring his library card when setting out to come to the library.

While waiting for him to do this, there was a sudden rush on our computers, causing me to dash to and from the circ desk to sign people on and boot other people off. Soon enough, I saw Mr. Crab scuttling toward the desk to check out, but I was already in mid-dash and decided he could wait a whole 30 seconds until I returned. On my way out of the room, I spied Kanji the Kid coming in the front door.

When, at last, I returned to the circ desk both Kanji and Mr. Crab were waiting there. Kanji was standing nearest our computer sign in sheet, so I told him it would be a while before we had a computer, as they were all quite full.

"Actually, I don't need a computer. I need to renew some books I have out," Kanji said. He nodded toward the circulation desk computer, as though I should fire it right up.

"Do you have your library card?" I asked.

"No."

Ah ha, I thought. Just the situation Mr. Crab was waiting for. Would I treat anyone else differently than him? In this test, though, I would deny Kanji any such service, right in Mr. Crab's face, so he would know what he had coming to him before he tried to pull the same trick.

"That's why I called home and got my number," Kanji finished. He passed me a little yellow slip of paper with his card number written out.

"Ah. Very good, then," I said. I typed in his number, renewed his books and Kanji happily lumbered out of the building.

When I looked up at Mr. Crab, I expected to find him pre-surly for my convenience. But he just slid his books at me and then passed me his "liberry" card without a fight, or even his usual lengthy search of his overstuffed wallet, or his usual threats to withhold donations should he not find it and then be denied service. As I began checking his books out, our desk-side surl-o-meter began to ping.

"Rude!" Mr. Crab griped. "That young man was rude, shoving his way to the desk, like that, ahead of other people. Rude." He then gave me an expectant look, as though waiting for me to agree with him or otherwise give him a fight. I started to explain that Kanji didn't mean to be rude; he just has Aspergers. Then I decided that Mr. Crab wasn't owed any explanation, so I just shrugged. Mr. Crab took his books and made for the door, nearly plowing into a lady patron in his haste to exit.

"He's one to talk about rude," the patron said after Mr. Crab had left. "He nearly ran over me and didn't even say `excuse me.'"

I started to explain that Mr. Crab didn't mean to be rude; he's just an asshole. But I decided against it, so I just shrugged.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #64

*RING*

ME— (Answers Phone) Tri-Metro County Library.

MAN ON PHONE— Yes, in the book Gone with the Wind, does Scarlett actually say the phrase, "As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again"?

ME— Couldn't tell you. I might be able to do some research on this and get back to you, but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. I've never read the book.

MAN ON PHONE— (Incredulous of tone) You haven't read the book?

ME— Nope.

MAN ON PHONE— What kind of library are... Who is this? (This last part was said in the tone of someone who wants very much to know the name of the one man on earth who hasn't read Gone with the Wind.)

ME— JUICE.

MAN ON PHONE— JUICE? Do you have a last name?

ME— AARON. (Though, in reality, I said my real last name, which, when pronounced properly, frankly sounds kind of like a sneeze.)

MAN ON PHONE— Come again?

ME— AARON.

MAN ON PHONE— Oh my. (Long Pause) Well, I guess I won't bother you anymore then. (Hangs up before I can further offer assistance)

ME— (Looking around at my three coworkers and two sundry patrons who heard my half of the conversation) That was the strangest phone call I've received this month.

After relating the full call to them, the ladies immediately dove into this reference question with gusto and in under two minutes had produced the answer of Chapter 25. If only the man had left a number before hanging up.

So, no, as God is my witness, and despite the fact that I'm a southerner, I haven't read Gone with the EFFing Wind, nor have I seen the film, nor do I have any major plans to do either.  Ever.

It's not that I think they're bad, or anything. In fact, I hear they're both quite good, (though Mrs. A is of the opinion that while Scarlett in the book is a strong, likeable female protagonist, her film counterpart is a spoiled, whiny bitch). Consuming either of these versions is just ridiculously low on my priorities of things to experience in life. They're classified somewhere above "eating a mouthful of sand, again," but still well below "getting to meet that girl who played Annika in the Pippi Longstocking movie, who I had a crush on when I was a kid."

(Sorry, but some of these priorities were set for me roundabout 1979. I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about it.)

The Coot

The Coot has been in the Benign Irritants column of our Rogues Gallery for a while now, but I've not had much to say about him because he's not been much of a hassle to me personally. Well, until this week.

As far as patrons go, the Coot is actually pretty ideal in most respects. He visits the "liberry" frequently and stays for several hours at a stretch, either reading books or periodicals. He doesn't hound us for computers, nor does he seem to have any use for them at all. He keeps to himself. And while he rarely checks anything out, thereby keeping our circulation numbers slightly lower than he might, he is a user of the library in its best sense.

Of course, not all is rosy with the Coot. He has, on occasion, complained in bitter tones to our staff about a lack of certain nonfiction titles on our shelves that he wants to read. (We've offered to ILL them and he has sometimes taken us up on the offer.) The Coot has also disingratiated himself to Mrs. A in particular by being a less than quiet patron.

See, Mrs. A's office is located beside our periodicals area, at which there are two semi-comfy chairs and a small table. This is where the Coot likes to nest, piling the tiny table high with periodicals and books that he peruses throughout his visiting hours. While he's perusing, though, the Coot is known to make many strange noises. Sometimes these noises take the form of the usual coughing and sneezing and snorting. More often, though, they manifest as loud and painful sounding moans, groans and wails. Sometimes, he sings. We don't know if the Coot is in actual pain, though we suppose it's possible. Our theory about his noises has evolved somewhat. Originally we thought he was in pain. Then we thought he might have some form of tourettes. Now, though, we are starting to suspect that the Coot moans and wails as editorial comment against the frequent phone calls Mrs. A receives throughout the day disturbing his reading time. Whatever the case, the noise he makes drives Mrs. A nuts and she's frequenly fled our office to get away from it. And sometimes, her noise seems to drive him further into our nonfiction room, where he relocates his nest to a different semi-comfy chair.

None of this affects me, so I don't really care if he emits the odd wail now and then. What does affect me is his seeming inability to put our periodicals back where he found them.

One of my duties as "liberry" ass. is to process and catalog the periodicals. When they arrive, I enter them into the system, put barcodes on the ones that need them, stamp REFERENCE ONLY on the ones that don't and haul `em all upstairs to stick in the magazine display shelf. Each magazine has its proper place on the shelf, clearly labeled for all to see. The Coot cares not for labels. If he actually manages to put a magazine back on the shelf at all—which is rare, because most of the time he just leaves them wherever he happens to be nesting when he's finished reading them—he refuses to put it back in its proper place. He just wedges it on in wherever his hand happens to fall and walks away. Granted, he's not the only patron who does this. (In fact, evidence suggests that most periodical reading patrons do this, but then again I wouldn't notice when a patron has put a magazine back properly, precisely because it would be put back properly.) However, the Coot is the most flagrant disregarder of our magazine labeling system.

At closing time on Monday, after a day of fending off book-shoving brats, I went upstairs and found our magazine rack in the most utter state of disarray I'd ever seen. Someone, the Coot, I'm guessing, as he'd been right there reading magazines all day, had relocated nearly every magazine we have on display to what I can only describe as its OPPOSITE location on the display shelf. Seventeen was shelved under U.S. News & World Report, Time under Organic Gardening, Rolling Stone under Mother Earth News, Atlantic Monthly under FamilyFun and Parenting was shelved under High Times. (Okay, I am kidding about that last one. It was really shelved as Teen People.)

I don't know for sure that the Coot was responsible. It could have been that book-shoving brat's revenge for busting him shoving books. But it seems like it could have been the Coot at play. I wonder what sort of editorial comment he was trying to make this time.

Monday the 13th

My once a month Monday solo shift, today, wasn't nearly as traumatic as Mondays typically can be. There was really only one moment during the whole day when the chaos threatened to overwhelm. However, from the state of our shelves when I arrived, the "liberry" appeared to have been locked in the throes of chaos all weekend long. Considering that Ms. S had been the weekend warrior riding the desk, this was probably true. Several partial shelves of books had fallen over, sans bookends. Other shelves had their books shoved back from the front edge of the shelf, the victims of one of our industrious book-shoving child patrons. Such children irritate the bejezus out of me.

Don't get me wrong: I do understand that "liberry" logic and little kid logic don't have much common ground. In "liberry" world, whenever possible, books must all line up neatly with the front edge of the shelf so that they are pleasing and uniform to the eye. In little kid world, books must be shoved all the way to the wall, because there's all that empty space back there and it's somehow satisfying to shove `em back into it. And keep shoving them back into it, until they've gone around an entire room. (Oddly, most book-shovey kids only shove books back on one shelf level, usually the arm-height middle level, leaving the lower and upper levels alone, regardless of whether or not they can reach them. I don't know if this is by design, or if it just doesn't occur to them that all the other shelves have books with space behind them too.)

What's even more irritating about the book-shovers is that it's difficult to catch them at it. Usually their work is only discovered long after they've left the building. So you can imagine my great joy today—after having spent a lot of time pulling all the weekend's shoved books back out to the front edge and righting and bookending their fallen comrades, not to mention swearing under my breath at the kind of terrible things that would make Dick Cheney blush that I was going to do to whatever brat was unfortunate enough to let me catch him shoving books—when I looked over the edge of the circ-desk to spy a newly arrived kid shoving a whole row of mysteries back with wild abandon.

"PLEASE, don't shove those books back, please," I said. I added the second please because kid's mom was standing right there and the first please was uttered in a rather harsh and possibly bloodthirsty tone.

The shover whipped around, mid-shove, with a gratifyingly frightened and guilty expression on his face. This was no tiny kid who could claim innocence, either. This was an 11-year-old who clearly knew better. His mom, like a doe sensing a whiff of trouble in the air, looked up, too. I then added, "We like to keep the books pulled out to the front of the shelf."

The two of them set about pulling the books back out, but, having not been trained in the proper method for doing this, they did it pretty half-assedly.

The subject of patrons doing basically harmless things in libraries that they are clearly not meant to do and also know better than to do is not a new one. In addition to our book-shoving brat, we were also visited today by another purveyor of "liberry" irritation: The Coot.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

I Dream of Gene (Leaving)

Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine was in typical form last week. He came in Friday for a long haul session of research and was disappointed to hear it would be a 20 minute wait for a computer. So he plopped down in the front room and set about making us miserable, i.e. by talkin' at us. His topic at least varied from geneal0gy, centering instead on our lack of computers and our restrictive time limits, but these were subjects broached only in the most pleasant and genial manner he could muster. Then Gene asked how many computers the Town-C branch had, compared to our three. 

"A lot," I said in a hopeful tone. "At least five." 

"And are they as busy as these?" he asked. 

"Last time I was down there, they weren't," Mrs. C offered. 

Gene mused on this for a bit and then said that he didn't like having to drive to Town-C to do his work. Mrs. C then suggested that he try the local community college "liberry" because they didn't have any time limits whatsoever. It was only a short walk from our front door. 

Again, Gene decided he wasn't interested in actually going anywhere. Mrs. C then pointed out to him, in her own very pleasant and genial manner, that technically we still have a rule on the books that each patron is to receive a maximum of 3 computer sessions per day, but that we just haven't had to enforce that rule in several years. (This was a new one on me, otherwise I might have campaigned to get it reinstated beforehand. ) The rule itself, as Mrs. C later explained, stems from a time when we only had one public access computer which was constantly being fought over by the likes of Mr. B-Natural and The Untalented Mr. Ripley. It was actually Ripley who got the rule established, for he was even more hungry for computer time than Mr. B-Natural or even Crusty and would stay all day long as the machine's resident user, only taking temporary and highly reluctant breaks when bumped off for other patrons. 

Gene didn't seem to sense the veiled threat in Mrs. C's words. Eventually, he got a computer and stayed there for over 2 hours before the others filled up and it was time to boot him. He did his little frustrated laugh, gathered up his crap and made for the desk to sign up again. We did have another patron who was also out of time at that point, a kid who'd been on for over an hour. I didn't really feel like booting the kid off, either, because it seemed to me that as long as Gene had been on past his initial half hour, the kid should get some consideration too. Plus, it really annoyed Gene that we didn't immediately bump the kid off for him, who he HAD to know was out of time too. Unfortunately, not bumping the kid meant we had to listen to Gene go on and on about how much it would cost him to get good internet service in his neck of the county and about the massive crooks who ran his phone company. I tried to hold out for as long as possible, but after only five minutes of his patented good-natured complaining, I ran for the computer hall and told the kid he had to give it up. 

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Mrs. C said after Gene had hauled all his crap back to the computer hall. She'd been sitting in closest proximity to Gene and therefore received the brunt of his attention. 

I really shouldn't complain about Gene. As far as annoying patrons go, he's at a pretty low and inoffensive level. We should really pray for more just like him.

All in the Gene (a.k.a.: "Set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance!")

Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine is still far from being a Rogue Patron, but he’s certainly not helping himself when it comes to staying out of my field of temptation to classify him as such. In fact, he’s rapidly encroaching upon Crusty the Patron’s record for sheer computer usage. 

For the past couple of days he's been really putting the geneal0gy pedal to the geneal0gy metal, burning up the hours just a researchin' and researchin' as fast as his little geneal0gist fingers can go. Apparently, it's been going well for him. Trouble is, other people need to use computers too, so we have to bust him off frequently. Now Gene's never ever been nasty to us when we've had to go back and tell him his time is up. However, his typical reaction when we do is almost as annoying.

As we approach, Gene looks up at us to roll his eyes in a mostly inoffensive way. We then break the news to him someone's waiting for his computer at which point he shakes his head and gives off a little laugh in what I can only intuit is a George-McFly-wagging-a-finger-at-old-Biff "Oh, you wacky liberry staff, interrupting my important important work, yet again. Well, I guess I'll go ahead and get up, but only because I'm such a nice guy. What am I gonna do with you crazy kids?" sort of tone. It's okay if you hear such a laugh once, but after the 5th time in a day, it really starts to gnaw on your ass. 

Gene then makes a giant production of gathering up all his geneal0gy crap, which he'd previously spread across the whole of creation (i.e., his computer desk) and packing it neatly away in his giant geneal0gy-crap-bag, which he then hauls up front to begin the next stage of his campaign of annoyance. 

See the brilliance of Gene is that he has a sure fire method of getting a new computer as quickly as possible. He plants himself in the front room and proceeds to lecture anyone in proximity on the infernally-boring subject of his geneal0gy research. He whips out a chart and starts pointing at relatives, telling you where they came from, why they left where they had originated from, what they did when they got where they were going, what their name got changed to, where they moved, who they married, what libraries they did their geneal0gy research in, what "liberry" staff they irritated, etc. When he starts in on that, we can't kick other patrons off computers fast enough. And if it turns out there's going to be a long wait for the next computer patron to run out of time, (say, anything over a minute) it rapidly becomes an every-staff-member-for-themselves situation. Suddenly, alphabetizing the easy-reader section looks mighty inviting and we will break our asses running to get there first. And God help the poor, dumb, slow soul who gets trapped behind the desk when the exodus occurs, because they're the one who'll have to endure the pain. 

Having been that poor, dumb, slow soul on more than one occasion, I can report that not only does Gene go on and on and ON about geneal0gy, he's now taken to complaining about the slowness of our computers, how much time the work itself takes, the costliness of the geneal0gy sites he uses, how he really needs to get his own computer, and a bunch of other stuff I try my best to tune out. 

I'm now thinking the only logical defense against Gene is to stick fingers in ears and sing the Love Boat theme song at full volume, off key. That, or maybe a swift application of a "liberry" taser. And that is an essential piece of equipment we lack. I frequently propose that we buy one and just as frequently my proposal is rejected by my boss, Mrs. A. Maybe we should trap her at the desk with Gene for about 20 minutes and see how that loosens up the purse strings.

A-Okay

Since most of the "real" staff was out of town all week, today was the first day I was able to speak to anyone regarding the Crusty situation. 

I tried to tell Mrs. C on Thursday, but Crusty wouldn't leave the building and I didn't want to risk my voice carrying from the circ desk to the computer hall. (With Crusty's sense of smell obviously blunted, his hearing might have increased in power to compensate.) So I kept quiet. 

Today, though, Mrs. A had also returned and, naturally, so had Crusty. It was also raining, so I knew there was no way Crusty would actually leave the building if he could help it. 

I asked Mrs. A if I could speak to her in the activities room, the most distant point from computer hall you can reach and still remain on "liberry" property. I think Mrs. A probably thought I was going to complain to her again concerning Crusty's crustiness and smell and she started to try and head me off at the pass by telling me she'd been researching the matter. I told her it was okay, that I wasn't complaining and that I may have taken care of the matter, though perhaps not as permanently as we might like. I told her what went down earlier in the week and how Crusty was considerably less crusty now as a result. 

"I didn't think I smelled him, today," she said. 

In turn, Mrs. A told me that she'd spoken with several colleagues on the matter while at the "liberry" assoc. conference and they had told her it was fine to kick someone out for being filthy provided we had such contingencies written into our "liberry" policy. Such an addition would require a vote by our board of directors and Mrs. A felt confident that they would approve. Our plan now is to borrow the wording of such policies from another "liberry" that already has them, add them to our policy, get the board to approve it. And because she can't imagine how we would go about approaching said stinky patrons regarding their condition, she wants to send the entire staff off for training in such methods. 

Unfortunately, my proposal of instituting a policy in which we simply apply a sock full of quarters across the backs of our stinky patrons skulls, followed by a quick wheelbarrow trip with them out to the dumpster, was not approved. 

As complicated as this situation may yet become, I am heartened that Mrs. A sought advice on the matter from her peers and is willing to enact policy about it. It was getting to the point where I was considering how justified I would be in threatening to quit over the matter.

Of course...

 ...the thing I failed to take into account before speaking to Crusty the patron's friends and housemates, (y'know, in regard to Crusty's general crustiness and sanity-sapping stench), is that his friends might in fact go tell Crusty that I'm the guy who told them. This only occurred to me after I arrived at the "liberry" to open up this morning. 

It was a troubling thought.

In an ideal world, they might take Crusty aside and calmly tell him something like, "Pardon me, Crusty, but are you aware that your body odor is capable of knocking a buzzard off of a shit wagon? Well it can and, oh look, it has. And on a related subject, your beard seems to be doing its best impersonation of the Ally Sheedy snowflake scene from The Breakfast Club on a fairly constant basis. Would you, perhaps, be so kind as to take a damned bath?" 

However, while I would much prefer that Crusty's friends were discrete about where they gleaned their information, I had no control over how they imparted it to him and I could see that for them it would probably be far easier to blame it on me. It could just as likely get phrased, "Pardon me, Crusty, but were you aware that someone seems to have given you a good hearty beating with a large chunk of driftwood they hauled out of the cess pit of a hog farm? And your chin, sir, while still covered in hair, is like a putrid yet flaky croissant originating from the Butt-Riest Valley Baking Company and which I have no doubt was once in close proximity to the wang of a desert-dried corpse. But don't take our word for it; that guy from the library said so, as well." 

What if Crusty was pissed off at me? What if he confronted me about the matter? What if he, dare I say it, raised a stink? 

I mused on that for a while before deciding that if he wanted things to go down like that, it would be fine with me. I would simply say, "Do you really want to have this conversation?" If so, I would then explain to him that being exposed to his leavings was not fair to our patrons, nor to me, nor to our computer keyboards. Furthermore, I now know that he is not homeless and does have access to running water and soap, so he no longer has any excuse for turning up smelling like a turd blossom. 

While I was still formulating my potential side of the argument, the door opened and Mr. Stanky walked in.  Sonofa... He signed up for a computer and I put him on the little one by the stairs, his favorite. 

Mr. Stanky's hair looked wet. I hoped he had just washed it and that it wasn't simply clogged with grease. I supposed he could have had a bath. After all, I hadn't been clubbed by his usual invisible stench cudgel when he came in. In fact, it actually took a couple of walkbys as he sat at the computer to detect any sort of odor from him. He was stinky, but not anywhere NEAR his usual levels. He only stayed his half hour. 

By 12:30 there was still no sign of Crusty. Perhaps he was too embarrassed at being confronted with his own uncleanliness to return? Maybe it would be a good thing if they told him I'd said it. 

Around 1:45, Crusty walked in and signed up for a computer. I'm not entirely sure if he'd bathed his whole body, but his face seemed a good deal cleaner. He'd trimmed his beard short and there was no sign of crust. Furthermore, while he didn't smell springtime fresh, he certainly wasn't overpowering. Perhaps he'd bathed and just put on some old and only semi-stinky clothes. Whatever, it was a vast improvement and a welcome one. 

Crusty also failed to punch me in the face or acknowledge at all that I'd had anything to do with his sudden sprucing up. Competition for the computers was pretty fierce, so he got busted off a couple of times before I had to leave for the day. Still, I'm satisfied that he's moving in a positive direction.

THE FRIEND OF MY ENEMY IS MY... wait, that aint right. THE ENEMY OF MY FRIEND IS... er, no. THE FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF MY ENEMY IS... oops, outta spa

With most of the staff out of town at our state's "liberry" assoc. meeting, it's been me and the Newbies holding down the fort. 

I rolled in today fully expecting to find chaos in reign and Crusty the Patron (a.k.a. Nearsighted Dave) hogging up one of our computers, stinkin' up the joint. Instead, Ms. M managed to stave off the chaos, but I did detect the distinctive scent of Crusty upon the air. 

I checked the computer hall, but oddly he wasn't there. We even had an empty computer available should he turn up, which I had confidence he would. The lingering fumes were explained by a glance at our computer sign in sheet, which told me he'd already been in twice that morning, and a glance at the free keyboard in the back, which was choked with his crust. 

After I cleaned and disinfected everything in sight, Mrs. J and Ms. M told of how the computers had been eat up all morning and it was only now that things were finally calm. Crusty had been asked to relinquish his computer three different times and finally gave up on the last one. So began the waiting game, in which my spine clenched every time I heard the door open and I was only too happy to give anyone through it a computer, so long as they were not Crusty. Oddly, he didn't show, but this didn't help my nerves. 

Mid afternoon, a couple arrived. I recognized the man as a fellow who had accompanied Crusty several days ago. They'd both been in on a particularly rainy afternoon and I remembered that the man had identified himself to me as Crusty's friend after alerting me that he'd relinquished his own computer to Crusty in order to let him stay on. Furthermore, the man, both then and today, did not strike me as being in quite the same "In Need of Meds" situation as Crusty. In fact, he seemed like a pretty normal, pretty likeable guy. 

An idea began to stir in my brain. 

What if I was to approach Crusty's friend about Crusty's situation with us? Sure, it was a risky move, but I got good vibes from this guy. He seemed to actually care about Crusty and perhaps was in a position to be a good influence on him and, hopefully, his bathing habits. Breaching the subject, though, was daunting. To my horror, I also realized it was very much the sort of move my dad would have made given the same circumstances and I wasn't sure I wanted to go down that particular road. Not that it's a bad road to travel, but my car handles much better on more passive aggressive parkways. 

Still, the idea of this nagged at me. 

The husband and wife looked around for a bit, found some books they wanted, asked me to help them with finding some others and eventually they came to check out. The wife said she had probably lost her card in a house fire they'd been through a few months back, so she would likely need a new one. I set her up with one and wasn't going to charge her for a replacement, then saw she wasn't in the computer at all and just made her a new card from scratch. 

While they waited, the husband said, "Let me go see if DAVE is here," and went back to the computer hall. Crusty Dave was not in, so the man returned to report this to his wife, providing me with the best IN to the situation I was ever likely to get. 

I finished checking their books out to them and, seeing as how no other patrons were present in the room, said, "You're friends with DAVE right?" 

"Yeah," the man said, cheerfully enough. 

Now I'd done it. I'd stepped out there, but hadn't really given much thought as to how I was going to phrase any of this. 

"Is he... without a home, at the moment?" 

"No," the man said. "Well, yes and no. He stays with us right now." 

"Ah," I said. "Okay," I also said. There followed a very long pause. "We've been having a bit of a…" pause, "...kind of a..." painfully long pause. "How do I put this?" 

"Bluntly," his wife said. 

"Go ahead and just say it," said the man, still upbeat. "I can see you're coming from a good place." 

"Okay. Well. We've been having some... hygiene issues with him," I said. 

The man seemed at first to start to defend his friend. Then, in a split second, reconsidered, so that his initial defense statement went, "Yeah, but he... I know, I know. I agree." 

I explained then that there wasn't a whole lot we could do about this issue, but it had long since become a problem for us. I explained about the beard dandruff in the keyboard, which received knowing nods and appropriately disgusted looks from both husband and wife. Feeling emboldened by this, I added, "And he smells pretty bad, which kind of makes the place unlivable for those of us who work here." 

They nodded. 

I then, in slightly more polite terms, mentioned how he stays a very long time on the computers, which would be fine by us except for the whole stench and dandruff thing. (Actually, he would be very annoying without the stench, but we'll gladly tolerate it if he's clean.) I explained that we've had no other real problems with him and that he always gets off when someone else needs a computer.  I mean, eventually, he does.  And that he's always welcome to sign up for more sessions if he wants and that we're in no way trying to restrict his use of library services.  We just wish he wasn't so unpleasant. 

The man said he understood completely and that they've actually been dropping hints to Crusty for a while now that he's ripe. The man said they would now gently confront Crusty about it and if suggesting didn't work he'd just tell him bluntly and lay it out there. The wife explained that they had recently lost everything in a house fire themselves and were only just now getting back on their feet. They have a house, but apparently no plumbing as of yet so they have to take showers at her sister's house. Crusty, an old friend of theirs, turned up one day and has been hanging around ever since. He has not, however, taken them up on their offer of the use of the shower. 

I felt bad for their loss and more than a bit guilty for whining about stinky patrons when the stinky patron's friends had lost everything they owned. Then again, he is the one not bathing when it's available. I was very pleased with the encounter, though. The couple took my request well and had exactly the positive reaction I'd hoped for. Maybe it will do Crusty and us some good. (My dad would be so proud.)

CrustOrama!

Crusty the Patron (a.ka. Nearsighted Dave) was, of course, back today. He left us with marginally (MARGINALLY!!!) less crust than last time, but he made up for his slight lack of dermal generosity by staying on the computers for nearly SEVEN HOURS!!!!! 

He had already been there for an hour and half by the time I arrived. Then, half an hour later, we had a sudden rush on the computers and I was able to boot him off for someone else. I again cleaned up his crust and disinfected the area before allowing the next person on. 

Crusty lingered in our front room for several minutes. I wondered if perhaps he'd signed up for another session of computing time and was just waiting for his turn to roll back around, but his name wasn't on the sheet so I didn't offer when another computer freed up a couple minutes later. 

Eventually, he left the building, but did not take his lingering stench with him. I had to carpet bomb the front room with Febreeze air-freshener. (We now have cans of the stuff hidden EVERYWHERE. Frankly, I'd prefer to have it in Fire Extinguisher form.) 

Crusty was only gone for about 10 minutes before it started to rain. He'd departed on foot, so he must not have a car, or at least not one nearby. As soon as the raindrops began to fall, he once again appeared. I wondered if he would notice the Febreeze, but thought it unlikely, what with his olfactory centers likely burned out from his own scent. I didn't really care either way. 

"Uh... I forgot I was supposed to e-mail somebody," Crusty Dave said. At that point, I had two empty computers in the back, so I didn't have any other avenue but to let him use one. I told him he could sign up again and went back to log him on. And from that moment until nearly 6:30 when I, at last, had enough computer demand to boot him off again, Crusty Dave's ass didn't move from his computer chair. 

And what, you might ask, was he doing for nearly 7 straight hours? Lookin' at porn, that's what. Or, at least, as much nakedness as our filters would allow him see—which turns out to be quite a bit, actually. This use of our facilities bothers Mrs. A more than his tender flaky crust.

Nearsighted Dave: The Return

One of my least favorite computer patrons of old has returned to plague us again. No, not Par— (oops—don’t say his name, it gives him power). I’m talking about Nearsighted Dave. 

We’ve not seen Nearsighted Dave since 2004 and a wonderful two year respite it’s been. However, a couple weeks back, he returned and began using our computers in his usual voracious manner. The thing is, it took me close to a week to figure out who he was. Since we last saw him, Nearsighted Dave has either fallen on hard times or just gone off his medication. His hair has grown long, stringy and greasy, his beard has grown shaggy and somewhat matted, and, by the smell of him, his bathing habits seem to have become intermittent at best. The fact that he’s perfectly content to stay on our computers for hours (HOURS!!!) at a stretch should have been a tip-off to his identity, but considering that this could be said about so many of our “intanet” crowd, it wasn’t. Some time last week, I happened to notice how this then-mystery patron consistently sat with his face literally (and, again, I must emphasize how correctly I am using the word “literally,” here) three inches from the screen.  That's when all the evidence staring me in the face became apparent and I had a moment of clarity. 

Nearsighted Dave is still just as annoying as he was back in the day. If left to his own devices, I have no doubt whatsoever that he would stay planted in front of our computers for the entirety of our working day and beyond—taking time out only to deposit the occasional woefully stinky turd in our bano and then refuse (REFUSE, I TELL YOU!!!!) to use the air-freshener so clearly available. The only way he’ll relinquish his computer is when the other two are full and we have to bump him off to let someone else on. And, of course, he gives you the stink eye (“literally”) when you ask him to relinquish his system and takes a phenomenal amount of time departing. 

As annoying as that is, Nearsighted Dave has now become exponentially worse. He’d already been on for several hours yesterday, his face practically pressed against the screen, one of his hands stroking his ratty beard in a contemplative manner, when it came time to boot him off for one of the other three patrons who’d suddenly arrived wanting a computer. I went back, told him we had someone waiting, withered appropriately under Nearsighted Dave’s stink eye and dismissive “OkAAaayyyy” and returned to the desk to await the moment when I'd have to go back and tell him again. And on my second trip back to tell him again I heard Dave get up. He can sense when you’re coming to tell him again. 

Then, as I was logging off his computer, I noticed a gray and ash-like substance spread across the keyboard. What, was he somehow smoking at the computer? No, I could only smell his unwashed presence, lingering ghost-like in the area, and not smoke. Oh, hell, I thought, as I realized what the ash was. I bolted up front, where my boss Mrs. A was trying to eat her lunch. 

“I hate to ruin your lunch like this, but I think you need to come look at this computer. The guy that was back there has left something foul and unholy,” I said. We returned to the computer hall where she examined the substance. 

“What is it?” she whispered. 

“Beard dandruff,” I whispered back. 

“Oh. My. Lord.” 

Moments later, armed with disinfectant spray and a large paper towel, I set about cleaning up the leavings. It was just as disgusting as you think. Afterward, I returned to the circ desk to consult with Mrs. A. 

“What do we need to do about this?” 

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” she said. Her point was that we can’t get rid of Mister Stanky because he stinks so much, so how can we get rid of Nearsighted Dave for being too crusty? I fell back on the legal aspects of the case, recalling her attention to the ALA article we found back in February that covers how libraries are able to do precisely that. Mrs. A, in turn, fell back on her old faithful stance of “I’m not going to be the one to test that case in this state.” I then returned to my original premise that what Nearsighted Dave had left on our keyboard was both foul and unholy. She agreed, but again said there was nothing we could do. 

“Um, maybe I don’t want a computer after all,” a nearby male patron said. He’d been waiting for the next available computer and had overheard what we’d been talking about. Unfortunately, our actual words had been very vague as to the identity of the substance I’d found, so this guy had the impression that it was an even fouler substance than it really had been. I tried to assure him I’d disinfected the keyboard.

“No, I don’t care how much you’ve disinfected it. I don’t want that computer. Once you get that stuff in there…” 

“Oh, no!” I said, realizing his assumption. “We’re talking about dandruff. Not... that.” 

He seemed relieved. 

“And if it had been... that,” I said, an eye in Mrs. A’s direction, “I would have thrown him out of here physically, whether it got me fired or not.” 

Mrs. A pshawed my threats and assured our patron that we’d never had anything like that happen around here before, though she had heard of some of our local coffee shops with “intanet” access having to deal with that, (including one rumored incident involving one of our former “intanet” rogue patrons whose name I nearly invoked earlier). 

After a bit, Mrs. A consulted with Mrs. C on the matter and it was decided that we should point out to Nearsighted Dave that our computers in the back are equipped with an in-computer desktop magnifying glass that he can use to enlarge content at his leisure. Should he choose to use it, his face wouldn't be positioned directly over the keyboard, so when he begins contemplatively rubbing his chin again his dandruff will at least fall in his lap rather than in our keys. 

I remained angry throughout the afternoon. I tried getting some perspective on the matter, but just couldn’t manage it. I felt like I could smell Nearsighted Dave’s stench clinging to my clothing and I kept checking myself for crust contamination. As far as foul substances I’ve had to deal with in my job go, dandruff is actually pretty benign. I mean, I’d much rather clean that up than another in-toilet Jackson Pollock ass-splatter from the Serial Shitter. Still didn’t mean I wanted to deal with it. So often the foul substances we do find are anonymously gifted to us. To me, this means that when we DO know who’s responsible for one of them we are obligated to nail him to the wall for it. 

Alas it appears this will not be the case. I got no sympathy from my wife when retelling the story to her. She is, after all, a doctor, who throughout her long workdays has to deal with mookystinks and foulness that make dandruff seem sweet and sterile. In fact, if it weren’t illegal for her to publicly speak about her patients, and if she actually had time and inclination to do it, a blog written by her would be an amazing and horrifying thing to behold. A story she once told me about discovering a potato chip in the fat fold of a patient would be enough to secure her blog immortality.

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.

Stinking Innanet Crowd!

I'm so disappointed in our computer patrons. Now that Crusty Dave has provided us with a genuine threat to temperament, nose and the holding down of lunch, none of our regular innanet crowders seem willing to help us get rid of him. 

See Crusty has proven himself perfectly willing to stay on our computers all day long, and, provided no one is in need of his computer due to the other two computers being taken up by patrons, he can actually get away with it. In order to bust him off, we need at least three other people who want computers at the same time. The trouble is, Crusty Dave is very very stinky. It's not quite the slap-you-in-the-face-with-a-dead-fish stench of Mr. Stanky, but it's ultimately a more pervasive stench because it has so much time to build up. Once any other computer user gets around him, they find their desire to stay there quickly diminishes and rarely stay for their full half hour. So for most of the day, there was at least one and often two computers open. 

At one point, Crusty had some competition from Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, a relatively recent addition to our benign irritants gallery whose major claim to infame is his tendency to tell anyone who gets too close to him the mind-numbingly boring details of his geneal0gy research. (We make it a point never to engage him in conversation of any kind because he forcefully steers it back around to his favorite topic every single time.) 

Gene got his computer a couple hours after Dave's first sign-in and I was glad to have him, because Gene can hog up the computer time better than most and has the added bonus of not stinking. Soon, another patron took the last computer and before long a kid came in and signed up for Crusty's. I let Crusty know he needed to get off, but by the time he actually got around to getting off the kid had left the building and I didn't technically have anyone waiting. I kept that bit of information to myself, though, and Crusty departed. 

I had barely had time to clean up his crust and spritz down his chair with Febreeze when he returned and signed up again. By then, unfortunately, the other computer patron had also departed, leaving only Gene. And by the time I had another computer-competition-trifecta, I then had to bust Gene off. 

Gene, while signing out, said something about possibly coming back later. I tried to get him to go ahead and sign up for another session right then. I was even willing to stand there and engage him in geneal0gy talk until his turn came up, but he decided he would go away for a bit first. 

So for the rest of my workday, Crusty and his intense stench held sway over the computer hall and indeed the landing above it. I spent the day cursing the usual innanet crowders for being so disloyal to us and Crusty for officially ruining Febreeze's Linen & Sky scent. 

Where the hell are our tried and true faithful? Why aren't they flocking to us in great numbers? (For it is only in great numbers that we will be able to stave off the evil!) I'll take nearly any of them, really, provided they're not stinky. Where is the Devil Twin Auxiliary League? Or the Devil Twins themselves?! I'd be willing to cut them some slack on fines if they'd just monopolize a couple of computers for a few hours for me. Where is Mr. B-Natural? Or Crazed Mom? Or Mr. Big Stupid? Or Kanji the Kid? Or The Dufus? Where are they? I'll take Mrs. Bellows or the Internet Neophyte, too, and will even show them how to load "the innanet." 

God help me, I'll even take Parka's dumb ass back. 

There! I said it! I said his name, have given him power and summoned him from the depths of whatever Stygian pit he's been trolling around for the past few blissful, Parka-Free months! Bring it on!!!

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.

Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 5)

In the morning, I found myself very slow to get out of bed. Sure, I wanted to get a good look at our kitty visitor/captive in the daylight, but found I was hesitant to actually do so. What if my daylight glimpse somehow proved this was not the cat? What if all the evidence that had seemed so clear the night before had been misperceived?

I finally got up and went out on the deck, armed with our little Tupperware cup of cat hair samples. Kitty was still quite angry, as any wet trapped cat might be, but he was considerably drier now, thanks to the umbrella. Despite his scowl, he was not an ugly cat, by any means. In fact, he was sort of pretty, though in a hateful, claw-your-eyes-out kind of way. He looked like a small, lighter-colored bobcat, complete with tufted ear tips.

I studied the fur samples in my cup and then studied his damp fur. They still seemed a match in daylight. I could even clearly see the grayish blotches intermingled with the black and sandy colors in his fur, matching the gray hair in the sample. Our sample didn’t contain as much of the two-tone black and sandy hair as he had on his back, but most of Winston’s self-defense back-clawing would have taken fur from the cat’s underbelly, where there was no black hair that I could see. Our miracle-capture looked good, but part of me still wanted more confirmation.

We rolled in to the vet’s office around 8 a.m. Dr. Barrier was just arriving as we pulled up and saw me carrying my new live-trap with its trapped live contents.

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

“You got him?” he said, his eyes widening.

“Looks like it,” I said.

Once our trap cage was on the examining table, Dr. Barrier gave the cat a look and said, “Wow, he’s a big guy.”

We passed Dr. Barrier our cup of hair samples and told him what it was. He took one look the sample, then looked at the cat and said, “That’s this cat’s hair, all right.” Those were beautiful words to hear. It was confirmation—from an expert, no less—that I wasn’t just forcing the evidence into a desired mold.

“He’ll probably have some wounds on his stomach, too,” I said, recalling the blood on one of Winston’s back claws. Of course, he probably had a puncture wound as well, since Winston had quite literally broken her tooth off in him.

Dr. Barrier asked us if we knew if this cat belonged to anyone. We explained how it did not belong to any of the neighbors we’d spoken with and that some of those neighbors already knew of it and believed it feral. Granted, it could still have belonged to someone in the area, but I didn’t feel a bit bad about turning it over. I’d seen this thing tearing into my cat with my own eyes. No, I didn’t like that this cat was going to have to die in order to prove whether or not my cat had rabies—and would then either die or live herself—but if a cat was going to have to die in this situation, I was happy to choose the one who had come onto our property and viciously attacked a member of my family. If this cat was infected with rabies, his death would be far more pleasant than the one he would have had. If not, he would be a dangerous and aggressive cat removed from the kitty gene pool.

Dr. Barrier explained that the cat would soon be euthanized and the pertinent bits of him shipped out to a state lab for testing. He said that just looking at the cat, it didn’t seem to be rabid, so likely it was just a particularly aggressive. Being a Friday, we’d probably not hear from them until early in the following week. Still, it bothered me that this cat had attacked Winston at all. She’s the wussiest cat in the world, so she wasn’t the instigator. We don’t have cat food on the deck, so he wasn’t after that. And, having been spayed in 1993, she should not have been a target for mating. The situation seemed comparable to a young punk attacking an old lady for no reason—though an old lady apparently not afraid to scrap it up a bit if it came down to defending herself.

After having her broken tooth extracted, Winston was released to our care, taken home and showered with canned cat food, extra Pounces, painkillers, antibiotics and love. It took her a couple of days to get used to the feeling of having a missing tooth, and her face looks a little crooked as a result, so she’s picked up yet another nickname, “Snag.”

Tuesday morning, Dr. Barrier phoned with good news. The test results on the other cat came back and were negative. Just as he’d suspected, the cat that attacked her was not rabid, so Winston was in the clear, rabies-wise. I scheduled an appointment to come in and get all her vaccinations and a kitty tune up.

This morning, I brought her in for her appointment. Dr. Barrier looked her over and pronounced that her wounds had all but completely healed and her broken tooth looked free of infection. He said she was ready to go outside again whenever she felt like it. So far she hasn’t, but when she wants to I’ll be there to open the door for her.

Winston Churchill: a kitty still poor and little, but as of yet not dead.

Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 4)

(Just to warn you, I’m about to get all religious on your ass. So atheist and agnostic readers can just sit on your hands for a bit or stick your fingers in your ears and sing the theme song to Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi really loud. Or, if you like, feel free to read on.)

I spent a good twenty minutes putting the live trap together and figuring out how to set it. It was a simple design, but proved quite effective when tested. All it needed was to be baited and placed. I chose our last remaining can of tuna for the bait. I’d nearly eaten it for lunch, earlier, but had decided not to at the last second. I opened the can, then placed the trap in the grass near the deck’s support post and shoved the tuna to the back of it. I then said a little prayer over the trap, but didn’t put much effort into it.

Before bed, Ash asked me if I wanted to pray together. I decided it was a good idea, since I feel like Ash has more bars on her connection to the man upstairs than I often do and I figured she could maybe act as an antenna booster for me.

My prayer was a meandering one over the course of several minutes and with many pauses. I began by thanking God for giving us Winston. She’s been my constant companion and friend through times when I had no one else around. As irritating as she can be, she’s been there with me, and later with me and Ashley, through good times and bad. Winston didn’t deserve the death in store for her. It would be one thing if we knew for certain that the cat that attacked her had rabies, for I would have no problem putting her to sleep to spare her such a fate. It seemed wrong, though, for her to have to die when we didn’t know for sure. This line of thought, however, lead me back to the whole I didn’t get her vaccinated like I should have and am a horrible person line, which just sent me off into self-pity land, mid-prayer. So I apologized to God for not getting her vaccinated and admitted that it was fully my fault. While I didn’t actually say it aloud, I was kind of hoping God would see fit not to allow Winston to die for my mistakes.

While I was on the subject of giving thanks, I thanked God for my family—in particular my step-mother, Myra. A month and a half ago, Myra learned that she has ovarian cancer. By the time it was discovered, it had already metastasized and spread to her colon, which is where they first discovered it. So Myra underwent surgery to remove the masses in her colon and then, three weeks ago, had her first session of chemotherapy. It’s not been a very pleasant experience for her thus far, but she and my dad seem to be dealing with it pretty well and they have a huge chain of people praying them some backup. Earlier on the same evening Winston was attacked, Myra and my dad had phoned to let us know that she’d been in for some tests and had learned that her body seems to be responding very well to her chemotherapy. Her doctors are already suggesting that so far she’s exhibiting progress similar to what they see in patients who go on to have lengthy remissions. She’s not out of the woods by any means, as her chemo sessions are to continue through August. But it’s a very good sign. At that moment, I realized I’d not yet thanked God for Myra’s progress. Quite frankly, I felt very guilty that here I was boo hooing over a cat when my own step-mother was fighting off cancer. At the same time, it also seemed to me that we should use a prayer technique for Winston similar to one we used for Myra.

On many occasions in the past, I have recognized that my control over a given unbearable situation is little to non-existent. On some of those occasions, I have chosen to go to God and offer that situation to him to deal with as he would see fit. There’s something very freeing about this, but admitting powerlessness and actually giving a situation into the control of a being who might say, “No,” is one of the most difficult things you can try to do prayer wise. It sounds easy enough on paper. It seems easy to just say, Oh, well, I can't do anything about this so I may as well give it up to God. However, truly giving something to God is far more difficult. It means you’re not allowed to keep worrying about it. It’s completely natural to want to keep worrying about it, but doing so does not show the proper degree of faith. Sure, you can express your preferences, but once you’ve given it into the creator’s control, it’s time to step back and trust him.

So I prayed then that God would take the situation from me. I had no control over making that cat go into our trap. I hadn’t even used particularly good tuna for bait. But I didn’t want to bear the thought that Winston went to an unfair death because of my negligence to get her shots updated and the only way to prevent that was for us to trap this cat. I had done all I knew to do and it was probably not enough. I therefore prayed that God would lay his hands on the situation, to take it from me and, hopefully, see fit to accomplish what I could not.

With that said, I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath. I tried to release all the anxiety I had over the matter and truly let it go. It must have worked, because I was asleep within minutes and slept remarkably well.

Around 4 a.m., it began to rain very very hard. The roar of the rain alone woke me up, but I probably would have known something was going on because Ashley, as usual, had to get up to go roll up her car windows. Hearing the rain pouring down began to worry me anew. To me it sounded the death knell of my efforts to trap the cat, for the tuna can had surely filled up with water, possibly flooding the tuna out of it entirely and certainly masking the smell. And what kind of cat was going to come out in the rain for wet tuna, anyway? I quickly began envisioning the week ahead—for surely the vet would only give me a week to accomplish my capture before punching Winston’s ticket—during which I would continue to set the trap, night after night and then wait in vain for the sound of it snapping shut. Ashley was right: there was no way this cat would return.

I lay there for several more minutes, unable to sleep, my mind whirring. Shortly, though, I realized that I was becoming ensnared in my own trap. I wasn't behaving at all like someone who had given the matter over to God, for that someone would have given the matter little thought and gone right back to sleep. Instead, I was allowing the hour of the wolf to creep in and stir up dread in my mind.

Once again, I took a cleansing breath and tried to clear my mind of all worry. I lay there for perhaps a minute when through the screen of our open bedroom window I heard a *SNAP * and my eyes shot open.

I wasn’t sure it was the trap, but that was definitely what it sounded like. Part of me didn’t want to believe I’d really heard it, because I didn’t want to be disappointed if I was wrong. But I got up anyway, put on my glasses and went to fetch a flashlight. Ashley woke up as I was doing this and I told her what I'd heard. She didn't seem to understand me and said that she'd checked the trap when she went down to roll up her windows and it had been empty.

“No, I just heard it,” I said.

I went to our bathroom window, opened it and shone the light down onto the ground where I’d left the trap. Staring back at me were two glowing eyes.

“There’s a cat in there,” I said.

“Are you sure it’s not a skunk?”

I was momentarily chilled at the ramifications of trapping a skunk. I’d not considered that possibility.

“No, it’s a cat,” I said.

I put on clothes and flip-flops then went outside into the now light rain and descended the deck steps. Ashley watched from the window above as I turned my light on the cage itself, revealing a large, medium furred cat growling at me. And while its fur was wet, I could see that it was primarily of a sandy color.

“I think this is it,” I said.

I carefully picked up the cage by its handle and held it at arm's length as I started moving toward the steps. The cat growled and thrashed itself against the ends of the cage, throwing it off balance and showering me with tuna water. I held on tight and made it up to the deck itself, where I set it down. Ash came outside and we turned on the floods for a better look. The cat was very wet and much of his fur was dark as a result, but there were actual streaks of dark hair along its back too. Several of his darker streaks were actually sandy colored hair with dark tips. On his underside was a thick layer of soft sandy-colored fur.

“That’s a big cat,” Ash said.

“Yeah.”

“The fur looks like a match, though.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it the one?”

I stared at it for a long time. I was firmly aware that I was now in a situation where I was prone to want to say yes to save my cat’s life. However, if I was wrong and Winston had been bitten by a different cat infected by rabies, we could be in huge huge trouble down the line. It was very important that I was certain this guy was the cat; I couldn’t allow my emotions to rule this decision; I had to rely on the evidence. From the size to the coloration to the attitude, though, the evidence pointed to this cat being the one. And that wide noble face certainly looked familiar. Was I just conjuring that, though?

“I think it’s him,” I said.

We left the kitty in the trap on our deck, but put a large umbrella over the cage so that he wouldn’t be rained on anymore. We then went back to bed where we lay crying with relief for a long time and thanking God for answering our prayer. Eventually we fell asleep.

(TO BE CONCLUDED…)