I left the vet’s office broken hearted and on the verge of tears. The weight of it hit me all at once and I began cursing myself again for being the cause of it all. Winston was now likely going to die because I hadn’t taken her in for vaccinations when I should have—when I KNEW I should have. I’d also been the one to let her outside in the first place, leading directly to her being attacked and losing a major tooth. I also didn’t think it was at all likely that we would be able to find the cat that had attacked. My gut told me it had been a wild cat, but we’d still have to talk to all our neighbors to find out for sure and I didn’t relish having to do that—especially not the neighbors who live on the road just down the hill from our own, where there are many “Private Drive” and “No Trespassing” signs to be found.
I drove to the cardiologist’s office where Ashley was working and let her know what was going on. I explained the grim situation and then we stood in the parking lot hugging one another and feeling sorry for ourselves and for our cat. To me it seemed like the end of the line for Winston. What the hell were we really going to be able to do about this?
“And you’re sure you didn’t get her vaccinated since 2002?” Ashley asked.
I thought about this for a moment and had a sudden flash of what I hoped was brilliance. I knew that I’d taken Winston to the vet’s office twice since we’d moved to WV and I knew she’d received vaccination shots during the second visit. In my grief-addled mind it made sense to me that she must have had shots during the first visit too. I knew for a fact that the first visit had been in the summer of 2002 because my sister had been visiting us at the time and that’s when we’d raced Winston in ER-style for a seizure that turned out to have been a hairball. Maybe she got some shots then too. And if shots were given every two years, I must have taken her in for the second visit in 2004. Either the vet’s records were wrong or my memory was wrong. I was hoping on the former and thought I knew how to prove it.
The last time Winston had last been vaccinated, the vet had given us her vaccination tags, which I had laid on a shelf in our utility room since Winston didn’t have a collar. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know—I’m going to hell because my cat didn’t have a collar. She’s had a few, but kept losing them so we stopped buying them for her until she could prove herself a bit more responsible with her possessions.) So all I had to do was find those tags and see if they had a date on them. I told Ash of my thought, which she agreed sounded good. If true, it would solve all our problems.
I raced home and searched the utility room shelf. Lots of crap and spray cans to be found there, but no tags. I then spent half an hour turning the rest of the house upside down, looking in all the junk drawers and out of the way storage areas where I might have moved the tags, but they were nowhere to be found. By then it was approaching 5p, so I figured I’d better phone the vet before they closed and ask them what their records actually said in regard to the dates of our visits. The receptionist looked me up and said the first visit had indeed been in July of 2002, but Winston had not been vaccinated since her shots were still current from her vet in Charlotte. (See! I used to be responsible!) Our second visit to this vet, when she had been vaccinated last, had been in November of 2002. My brilliance was dashed and hope was again on the downslide.
After Ashley came home, we climbed into the car and went to go canvass the neighborhood. We started with the little dirt road down the hill from us where we thought it most likely the attacking cat had come from. We’d never met any of the people living there, but as we drove door to door they seemed nice enough, despite the “No Trespassing” signs.
At the first house, a high-school aged girl was home. She said that her family did own a cat, but it was old and gray and not sandy colored like the one we were looking for. Other houses further down the road either had no cats or much fluffier cats than the one on our mental wanted poster. One set of neighbors, though, suggested we go back to the first house, where they said a cat matching our description actually lived. Curious. Had the girl been lying to protect her cat? We’d not seen it, so we guessed it was possible.
Instead of stopping back by there immediately, we went home and gathered up the tufts of the other cat’s hair from the deck and from where they had blown onto the ground below. Just as I recalled, the fur we found was mostly sandy colored and medium-length. Some of the sandy fur had dark tips while other bits of it were sandy and gray, which again matched my memory of other colors within the sandy fur. With furball in hand, we returned to the first house and asked again about their cat.
“Here, let me show you,” the girl said. She fetched her cat for us to see. Its coloration was mostly gray, though there was a bit of sandy hair in there too. However, it was both enormously fluffy and enormously good-tempered. As we were leaving, the girl’s parents arrived. We told them that we were looking for a cat. Before we could even describe the cat in question, they described to us a cat that matched its description saying they had noticed it in the area. Unfortunately, they thought it was a stray.
Disheartened, we left and continued to go door to door on our own street. While there was much sympathy, we had no success and soon returned home.
Seeing that our kitty quarry was likely a stray, I began phoning all the farmers we know from church to ask them if they had any live-animal traps. Nope. Theirs were all Kill-Em-Dead traps. So at nearly 6:30 in the evening, it looked as though our chances of finding such a trap had passed.
“Try Lowes,” Ashley said.
Lowes? Why the heck would Lowes have live traps? They’re home improvement, not animal improvement. Still, at Ash’s further insistence, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to call. Turns out they did have live animal traps, one sized for catching raccoons and/or cats. We rushed right down to pick one up.
On the way to the car with our new purchase, Ashley said, “I really don’t see that cat coming back. There’s just no way that…” Her words dropped off as she realized what a complete bummer she was being. “Sorry. I shouldn’t say that. I should say that I really think we’ll catch it right away.”
“Damn straight,” I said. “We’ll catch it immediately. In fact, it’ll be waiting for us in the driveway when we come home. It’ll offer to help put the trap together, but won’t be able to stand waiting around, so it’ll just wedge itself in the box.”
“Yeah.”
Still, I knew she was probably right. Even if we caught a cat and not a raccoon, who was to say if it was the right cat? My memory of what the thing looked like, as viewed without my glasses, seemed murkier by the second. All I really knew was that it was big, sandy colored and blotchy. I’d seen its face, but couldn’t really remember it. My only real prayer of hope in this situation was that the cat would come back for a second round with Winston and would stumble upon the trap. This seemed a slim hope at best.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 2)
On Wednesday night, just before my wife Ashley and I were about to retire for the evening, Winston dashed to the back door to be let out. Normally, I don’t like to let her out at bedtime because this means I’ll have to get up and let her in again at some point. However, the night was warmish and our bedroom windows were open so I figured she could come back in when she was ready via the hole she tore in our bedroom window screen a couple of years back. (We’ve left it there on the premise that she’ll just tear a new hole in any new screen we put up.)
Minutes later, I had just removed my glasses and was getting into bed when I heard the sound of cats squalling on the back deck. Usually when this happens, I break my ass running down the hall, fling open the back door and find Winston and a neighborhood cat facing off at opposite ends of the deck. This time, though, I flung open the door and turned on the deck’s floodlight to see Winston and a cat easily twice her size locked in a screaming, hissing, clawing, rolling ball of kitty combat. I ran out onto the deck, in my underwear, determined to break it up, but I didn’t really want to reach my hands into the swirling mass of cat claws to do so. Instead, I gave them an Incredible Hulk roar. My Incredible Hulk roar has worked wonders in past cat fights. It even caused one invading cat to leap off the side of the deck in fear, falling ten feet to the ground, though not to his doom. This time, the other cat didn’t seem to care about the Hulk. Before I had time to consider alternatives, Winston managed to break free from the other cat and dash into the house. The other cat still didn’t care that I was standing there, for he attempted to give chase and have another go at Winston. I, in turn, tried to stop this by applying a Hulk-Smash style fist to his cat person. Naturally, I missed a direct impact and instead grazed the cat’s body. It did seem to get his attention, though, and he scurried down the deck steps and disappeared into the night.
We found Winston in my office, hiding beneath my desk. There was a strong smell of cat urine, as she’d peed her self during the fight. Her nose and mouth were bleeding, as was a back foot claw. We took her to the bathroom and began cleaning her up with moist washcloths. Upon examination, we found that the bleeding in her mouth was due to one of her canine teeth having snapped off near the gum line. It dangled free in her mouth, giving us both the willies to look at. And her back claw that we thought was bleeding turned out to be covered in the blood of the other cat, as well as a chunk of his fur. I’d seen more chunks of it out on the deck and was happy to note there was far more of him left behind than her. He had been a very large cat, easily twice her size. I couldn’t really say that I got an in depth look at him, but from what I had seen I knew that his coloration was mostly sandy with some blotches of darker hair thrown in. And while he wasn’t exactly a long-haired cat, the hair had seemed at least longer than Winston’s short orange hair.
“Guess I’ll have to take her to the vet tomorrow,” I said.
I phoned the vet the following day, explained the situation and asked if I could bring Winston in for inspection. I also asked if I could go ahead and update her shots while I was there. I’m mortified to have to say it, but I had let Winston’s vaccinations lapse. I have no excuse for it, but as I said, we’ve never had to worry about her much so it never seemed as important as it should have.
When I took Winston in, the vet on duty, Dr. Barrier, came into the examination room and said he’d been told why I was there and had examined Winston’s records. He then asked me if the cat that had attacked Winston had been a neighbor’s cat or one that was wild. I told him I had no idea. We don’t know many of our neighbors, but the ones immediately around us don’t seem to own cats. We know there are cats in the neighborhood, because they’ve come round to visit before, but I had no idea if this one was one of theirs.
At this, Dr. Barrier looked grim. He explained that according to state law, any animal that attacks another must be assumed to be rabid unless proof can be obtained otherwise. In the case of cats, owners of an attacking animal can provide proof of vaccination. If the cat is wild, it can be captured, euthanised and tested. He said it wouldn’t have been a major issue either way, except that Winston’s own vaccinations were expired. The state requires pets be vaccinated once every two years, but are willing to allow three years between vaccinations in cases such as ours. Unfortunately, Winston had last been vaccinated in November of 2002, over three and a half years ago. According to state law, Winston would either have to be euthanized herself (the state’s preference) or spend 6 months in quarantine, unless we could provide proof that the cat who attacked her was clean. By quarantine, Dr. Barrier explained that this meant she would have to live in a small cage in a state-approved facility and this cage could only be tended to by one person, once per day, under very strict guidelines. After five months, if there was no sign of rabies, the cat could be vaccinated and then a month later released. He showed me the printed regulations that spelled this out.
Hearing that, I could not imagine anything more hellish to inflict upon Winston than six months in a cage. She was freaked out enough after being stuffed into her cat carrier and driven across town. And as half-crazy as she can be during normal conditions, there’s no way her little kitty sanity would survive 6 months in a cage, assuming she was even able to physically survive it. Perhaps if she were a younger cat, things might be different. In her case now, though, that would be cruelty at its purest.
I told Dr. Barrier that I would sooner see her put to sleep than have to go through quarantine. He said he understood, but that we weren’t to that point yet. Legally, he would soon have to phone the state and alert them to this situation, but there was some leeway even in that. Rabies takes a while to take effect, so while he wanted to keep Winston overnight for observation and treatment, he would gladly release her to us whenever we wanted. He suggested we should start asking around the neighborhood about the attacking cat and see if we could find its owners and prove its health. Other than that, he said we could get a live trap and see if we could capture it. I asked if they had any to loan out. They did, but theirs was currently on loan. Dr. Barrier wasn’t sure where in the area we could find one, because the last time his office had to buy one they’d had to drive over an hour away to the next biggest town.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
Minutes later, I had just removed my glasses and was getting into bed when I heard the sound of cats squalling on the back deck. Usually when this happens, I break my ass running down the hall, fling open the back door and find Winston and a neighborhood cat facing off at opposite ends of the deck. This time, though, I flung open the door and turned on the deck’s floodlight to see Winston and a cat easily twice her size locked in a screaming, hissing, clawing, rolling ball of kitty combat. I ran out onto the deck, in my underwear, determined to break it up, but I didn’t really want to reach my hands into the swirling mass of cat claws to do so. Instead, I gave them an Incredible Hulk roar. My Incredible Hulk roar has worked wonders in past cat fights. It even caused one invading cat to leap off the side of the deck in fear, falling ten feet to the ground, though not to his doom. This time, the other cat didn’t seem to care about the Hulk. Before I had time to consider alternatives, Winston managed to break free from the other cat and dash into the house. The other cat still didn’t care that I was standing there, for he attempted to give chase and have another go at Winston. I, in turn, tried to stop this by applying a Hulk-Smash style fist to his cat person. Naturally, I missed a direct impact and instead grazed the cat’s body. It did seem to get his attention, though, and he scurried down the deck steps and disappeared into the night.
We found Winston in my office, hiding beneath my desk. There was a strong smell of cat urine, as she’d peed her self during the fight. Her nose and mouth were bleeding, as was a back foot claw. We took her to the bathroom and began cleaning her up with moist washcloths. Upon examination, we found that the bleeding in her mouth was due to one of her canine teeth having snapped off near the gum line. It dangled free in her mouth, giving us both the willies to look at. And her back claw that we thought was bleeding turned out to be covered in the blood of the other cat, as well as a chunk of his fur. I’d seen more chunks of it out on the deck and was happy to note there was far more of him left behind than her. He had been a very large cat, easily twice her size. I couldn’t really say that I got an in depth look at him, but from what I had seen I knew that his coloration was mostly sandy with some blotches of darker hair thrown in. And while he wasn’t exactly a long-haired cat, the hair had seemed at least longer than Winston’s short orange hair.
“Guess I’ll have to take her to the vet tomorrow,” I said.
I phoned the vet the following day, explained the situation and asked if I could bring Winston in for inspection. I also asked if I could go ahead and update her shots while I was there. I’m mortified to have to say it, but I had let Winston’s vaccinations lapse. I have no excuse for it, but as I said, we’ve never had to worry about her much so it never seemed as important as it should have.
When I took Winston in, the vet on duty, Dr. Barrier, came into the examination room and said he’d been told why I was there and had examined Winston’s records. He then asked me if the cat that had attacked Winston had been a neighbor’s cat or one that was wild. I told him I had no idea. We don’t know many of our neighbors, but the ones immediately around us don’t seem to own cats. We know there are cats in the neighborhood, because they’ve come round to visit before, but I had no idea if this one was one of theirs.
At this, Dr. Barrier looked grim. He explained that according to state law, any animal that attacks another must be assumed to be rabid unless proof can be obtained otherwise. In the case of cats, owners of an attacking animal can provide proof of vaccination. If the cat is wild, it can be captured, euthanised and tested. He said it wouldn’t have been a major issue either way, except that Winston’s own vaccinations were expired. The state requires pets be vaccinated once every two years, but are willing to allow three years between vaccinations in cases such as ours. Unfortunately, Winston had last been vaccinated in November of 2002, over three and a half years ago. According to state law, Winston would either have to be euthanized herself (the state’s preference) or spend 6 months in quarantine, unless we could provide proof that the cat who attacked her was clean. By quarantine, Dr. Barrier explained that this meant she would have to live in a small cage in a state-approved facility and this cage could only be tended to by one person, once per day, under very strict guidelines. After five months, if there was no sign of rabies, the cat could be vaccinated and then a month later released. He showed me the printed regulations that spelled this out.
Hearing that, I could not imagine anything more hellish to inflict upon Winston than six months in a cage. She was freaked out enough after being stuffed into her cat carrier and driven across town. And as half-crazy as she can be during normal conditions, there’s no way her little kitty sanity would survive 6 months in a cage, assuming she was even able to physically survive it. Perhaps if she were a younger cat, things might be different. In her case now, though, that would be cruelty at its purest.
I told Dr. Barrier that I would sooner see her put to sleep than have to go through quarantine. He said he understood, but that we weren’t to that point yet. Legally, he would soon have to phone the state and alert them to this situation, but there was some leeway even in that. Rabies takes a while to take effect, so while he wanted to keep Winston overnight for observation and treatment, he would gladly release her to us whenever we wanted. He suggested we should start asking around the neighborhood about the attacking cat and see if we could find its owners and prove its health. Other than that, he said we could get a live trap and see if we could capture it. I asked if they had any to loan out. They did, but theirs was currently on loan. Dr. Barrier wasn’t sure where in the area we could find one, because the last time his office had to buy one they’d had to drive over an hour away to the next biggest town.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
Monday, May 29, 2006
Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 1)
Our cat, Winston Churchill: The Infinitely Bad Kitty, (a.k.a. The Kitty, a.k.a. Stupes McGee, a.k.a. Kitty Little, a.k.a. Kitty Pie, a.k.a. Kitlin, a.k.a. Goat Kitty, a.k.a. The Kittage, a.k.a. Poor Little Dead Kitty, a.k.a. Hey Cat!) is mostly finitely bad these days. That’s probably to be expected considering that she just turned 14 this past April.
Like some kind of sprawling family saga, my cat’s family history and my family history have been entwined for the better part of 25 years. Winston’s great grandparents—a crazy orange Tom and a very sociable fluffy calico—belonged to my grandmother. They had a litter of kittens, two of which came home with my sister and me—junior high and senior in high school-aged, respectively. My sister’s cat—Winston’s mother—was a beautiful short haired calico called Sam. My cat—Winston’s uncle—was a gray tabby called Al. (Yes, we were Quantum Leap fanatics. Shut up.)
They were pretty good cats, as far as cats went, but were only with us for a couple of years before they disappeared. Early in my college days, Al vanished without a trace, never to be seen again. Sam also disappeared soon after, but reappeared a few months down the line looking well-fed, healthy and quite clearly pregnant. We surmised that she had been adopted by another family, gotten knocked up and had decided to return to her real home to have her first litter of kittens. She stayed with us through the birth of that litter and hung around afterward until her kittens had been weaned. Then she vanished and we didn’t see her again until she turned up pregnant, several months later.
Among Sam’s first litter of kittens, in April of 1992, was a little kitty that was missing a tail and had something of a deformed pelvis that caused her to walk a little sideways, resembling a tiny bear. Her disability didn't slow her down much, though, and since Sam was unreliable at best, my sister adopted this runt kitty and named it Cleo. Another was a tiny orange kitten that, like most newborns, closely resembled the former British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. I was quite taken with her and, being as how my cat had long since disappeared, adopted her as my own.
Years passed, during which I moved out of the house, taking Winston with me to a four bedroom pad that I shared with several roommates, called Da Crib. This is where Winston gained her reputation for being infinitely bad, and began accumulating nicknames. We called her Goat Kitty because when she was irritated with us she would mew in a fashion that sounded like a little goat braying, "Myayayayayat!"
Once, Winston climbed up onto the kitchen counter and began sniffing amongst the dirty dishes in the sink. We were watching TV and wouldn't have known she was there at all until she accidentally knocked spoon into the sink. We heard, *DINK*, "Myayayaayayayayat!" for she knew she had been caught. We still laugh about that.
We also dubbed her the Poor Little Dead Kitty, because we felt that one day she would prove herself so bad that we would have no choice but to kill her. (My roommate, Joe, even composed a story for his sign-language class about the Poor Little Dead Kitty and how we were eventually going to have to kill her.) How bad was she? Well, she was full of the usual harmless kitty mischief, and was forever knocking over things that we didn't want knocked over, such as trashcans, in which she enjoyed digging for corn-cobs, that she would then strew throughout the house. (Once found a cob behind the downstairs toilet, yes we did.) However, she was also fond of excretory indiscretions, such as taking a whiz on my roommates’ freshly cleaned laundry. This prompted them to stop leaving baskets of it lying around and to keep the doors to their rooms firmly closed at all times.
When she had done something wrong, we would usually yell, “Hey, cat!” at which point she would run and try to hide by sticking her head under the edge of the sofa. She did this on the grounds that if she couldn't see us we shouldn't be able to see her, and is therefore suspected of being the reincarnation of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
After that grand experiment in collegiate cohabitation flamed out, two years later, I moved back in with my dad, step-mother Myra, sister and Cleo (not to mention Myra’s cat Lucien, who was the half-brother of Winston & Cleo). After college graduation, I moved to Tupelo to begin my career in radio and Winston came with me. She was there when I met Ashley and there when Ashley moved away. Winston was there through our courtship and came with me when I moved to North Carolina to be closer to Ash. Though she didn’t attend the wedding, she did accompany us to Charlotte to move into our new apartment, following the honeymoon. And two years later, she survived yet another move, this time to West Virginia.
Fourteen is pretty old for a cat. Thinking realistically, we’ve been curious as to just how much longer she’s going to be around. Not that we’re eager for her passing, or anything, but we know that her days—as is the case with all of our days—are numbered. The only cat I've had for nearly as long as Winston was our other family cat, Bay, who we had from my 4th grade year through early college. He wound up testing each and every one of his nine lives, surviving car fan-blades, and innumerable fights with other cats that resulted in broken, punctured tails, torn ears and gashes upon gashes. He also had a tragic encounter with a group of backwoods Mississippi Satanists, who stabbed him in the chest with a bone and threw him into a fire. He came limping back home, weeks later, missing all of his hair and most of one ear and was recognizable only by a gray dot on his nose. That was a heartbreaking experience, but he survived it. Our vet then, Dr. Anthony, patched him up and he eventually re-grew everything but the ear. Though the wound in his chest never fully healed, he lived on for a couple more years.
Winston, by comparison, has had a very easy life. No major hassles in the realm of catfights or trauma and no major health problems other than a penchant for hairballs. We don’t worry much about her because she’s an infernal wuss that runs from the least little thing and starts at every sound, so the chances of her getting into danger are pretty slim. She goes outside almost only at night, where she’ll have cover of darkness in which to lurk. And we know she never strays far from the house because Winston never mastered the art of using the bathroom outside and has, on many occasions, pounded on the door to get in only to run to the litterbox and then return to the door to be let out again. Beyond the hairballs, the closest we’ve come to any problems with her have been occasional screaming skirmishes with other cats.
Herein lies our story.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
Like some kind of sprawling family saga, my cat’s family history and my family history have been entwined for the better part of 25 years. Winston’s great grandparents—a crazy orange Tom and a very sociable fluffy calico—belonged to my grandmother. They had a litter of kittens, two of which came home with my sister and me—junior high and senior in high school-aged, respectively. My sister’s cat—Winston’s mother—was a beautiful short haired calico called Sam. My cat—Winston’s uncle—was a gray tabby called Al. (Yes, we were Quantum Leap fanatics. Shut up.)
They were pretty good cats, as far as cats went, but were only with us for a couple of years before they disappeared. Early in my college days, Al vanished without a trace, never to be seen again. Sam also disappeared soon after, but reappeared a few months down the line looking well-fed, healthy and quite clearly pregnant. We surmised that she had been adopted by another family, gotten knocked up and had decided to return to her real home to have her first litter of kittens. She stayed with us through the birth of that litter and hung around afterward until her kittens had been weaned. Then she vanished and we didn’t see her again until she turned up pregnant, several months later.
Among Sam’s first litter of kittens, in April of 1992, was a little kitty that was missing a tail and had something of a deformed pelvis that caused her to walk a little sideways, resembling a tiny bear. Her disability didn't slow her down much, though, and since Sam was unreliable at best, my sister adopted this runt kitty and named it Cleo. Another was a tiny orange kitten that, like most newborns, closely resembled the former British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. I was quite taken with her and, being as how my cat had long since disappeared, adopted her as my own.
Years passed, during which I moved out of the house, taking Winston with me to a four bedroom pad that I shared with several roommates, called Da Crib. This is where Winston gained her reputation for being infinitely bad, and began accumulating nicknames. We called her Goat Kitty because when she was irritated with us she would mew in a fashion that sounded like a little goat braying, "Myayayayayat!"
Once, Winston climbed up onto the kitchen counter and began sniffing amongst the dirty dishes in the sink. We were watching TV and wouldn't have known she was there at all until she accidentally knocked spoon into the sink. We heard, *DINK*, "Myayayaayayayayat!" for she knew she had been caught. We still laugh about that.
We also dubbed her the Poor Little Dead Kitty, because we felt that one day she would prove herself so bad that we would have no choice but to kill her. (My roommate, Joe, even composed a story for his sign-language class about the Poor Little Dead Kitty and how we were eventually going to have to kill her.) How bad was she? Well, she was full of the usual harmless kitty mischief, and was forever knocking over things that we didn't want knocked over, such as trashcans, in which she enjoyed digging for corn-cobs, that she would then strew throughout the house. (Once found a cob behind the downstairs toilet, yes we did.) However, she was also fond of excretory indiscretions, such as taking a whiz on my roommates’ freshly cleaned laundry. This prompted them to stop leaving baskets of it lying around and to keep the doors to their rooms firmly closed at all times.
When she had done something wrong, we would usually yell, “Hey, cat!” at which point she would run and try to hide by sticking her head under the edge of the sofa. She did this on the grounds that if she couldn't see us we shouldn't be able to see her, and is therefore suspected of being the reincarnation of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
After that grand experiment in collegiate cohabitation flamed out, two years later, I moved back in with my dad, step-mother Myra, sister and Cleo (not to mention Myra’s cat Lucien, who was the half-brother of Winston & Cleo). After college graduation, I moved to Tupelo to begin my career in radio and Winston came with me. She was there when I met Ashley and there when Ashley moved away. Winston was there through our courtship and came with me when I moved to North Carolina to be closer to Ash. Though she didn’t attend the wedding, she did accompany us to Charlotte to move into our new apartment, following the honeymoon. And two years later, she survived yet another move, this time to West Virginia.
Fourteen is pretty old for a cat. Thinking realistically, we’ve been curious as to just how much longer she’s going to be around. Not that we’re eager for her passing, or anything, but we know that her days—as is the case with all of our days—are numbered. The only cat I've had for nearly as long as Winston was our other family cat, Bay, who we had from my 4th grade year through early college. He wound up testing each and every one of his nine lives, surviving car fan-blades, and innumerable fights with other cats that resulted in broken, punctured tails, torn ears and gashes upon gashes. He also had a tragic encounter with a group of backwoods Mississippi Satanists, who stabbed him in the chest with a bone and threw him into a fire. He came limping back home, weeks later, missing all of his hair and most of one ear and was recognizable only by a gray dot on his nose. That was a heartbreaking experience, but he survived it. Our vet then, Dr. Anthony, patched him up and he eventually re-grew everything but the ear. Though the wound in his chest never fully healed, he lived on for a couple more years.
Winston, by comparison, has had a very easy life. No major hassles in the realm of catfights or trauma and no major health problems other than a penchant for hairballs. We don’t worry much about her because she’s an infernal wuss that runs from the least little thing and starts at every sound, so the chances of her getting into danger are pretty slim. She goes outside almost only at night, where she’ll have cover of darkness in which to lurk. And we know she never strays far from the house because Winston never mastered the art of using the bathroom outside and has, on many occasions, pounded on the door to get in only to run to the litterbox and then return to the door to be let out again. Beyond the hairballs, the closest we’ve come to any problems with her have been occasional screaming skirmishes with other cats.
Herein lies our story.
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #51
SETTING: My "liberry," the circ desk. A patron approaches to sign up for a computer. Because Mrs. A was recently at the desk, however, the pen from the sign up sheet had been removed from the sign up sheet clip-board, used elsewhere and deposited into the pen jar, as in accordance with tradition. I fish it back out from among the scant few pens and broken pencils there and pass it to the patron. I'm annoyed at how few pens are in the cup, for just a month ago Mrs. A brought in two full packs of cheap crappy pens to replace the other cheap crappy pens that disappeared before that.
ME: Where the heck are all our pens?
MRS. B: I don't know. We were just asking that this morning. Oh, that reminds me... Did you hear what they found that was clogging the toilet?
ME: No, no, what?
MRS. B: A pen.
ME: A pen?!
MRS. B: Yep. It was wedged in there sideways. It would let the liquid through but not the solids.
ME: Oh, please tell me we kept it! We should save it to loan out to patrons. `Heh heh, sure... you can borrow a pen. You can borrow our special pen.'
Alas, we had not.
ME: Where the heck are all our pens?
MRS. B: I don't know. We were just asking that this morning. Oh, that reminds me... Did you hear what they found that was clogging the toilet?
ME: No, no, what?
MRS. B: A pen.
ME: A pen?!
MRS. B: Yep. It was wedged in there sideways. It would let the liquid through but not the solids.
ME: Oh, please tell me we kept it! We should save it to loan out to patrons. `Heh heh, sure... you can borrow a pen. You can borrow our special pen.'
Alas, we had not.
Monday, May 08, 2006
More Salad Days
Last week, we the "liberry" staff left our branch in the semi-capable hands of a greenhorn while we hoofed it down to Town C for their branch's first annual fund-raising salad lunche0n.
I think Mrs. A was a bit worried about how their salad lunche0n would go, since they've never done anything like it before. There was much hand-wringing over whether or not they had enough salads or whether the venue they'd chosen to hold this in was big enough. However, when we arrived, everything seemed to be going gangbusters business. Though the hall they used was small, there was sufficient seating space and patron turnover to keep things rolling right along. The salads were also outstanding. However, some of the dining company turned out to be every bit as quirky as you might expect from “liberry” patrons.
While there were enough seats to accommodate our employee delegation, the seating was not all together, so Mrs. A, Mrs. B and Mrs. J sat at one table while Mrs. C, Mrs. Publicist and I sat at another. Before we could even start in on our salads, a very wide middle-aged man sat down in the other spare place at our table bearing the most enormous plate of salad I’ve ever seen. The simplest and most accurate description of this man’s plate of salad is to call it convex; it was a heaping, rounded dome of salad and it retained that shape for quite some time because this man would not stop flapping his salad hole long enough to eat any of it. From the moment he sat down until the three of us were finally able to disengage from him and flee the building some fifteen minutes later, this man ate maybe–MAYBE—four bites of his salad.
“I thought at least one of you would have shown up to that meeting up in Morgantown,” the man said. This was his opening line to us as he sat down and it was made in a very accusatory tone for someone none of us knew at all, nor he us. However, none of us knew that none of us knew this man, so we all just sort of gave each other odd looks while the man proceeded to hold us personally accountable for not being at a meeting the subject of which none of us had any idea about. Turns out, the meeting was something to do with a possible new levee or dam which this guy claimed could somehow cause the river levels in our neck to rise by 30 feet. We’d never heard of any of it and said so, which seemed to irritate Mr. Wide & Mouthy. He paused to take his first bite, giving me the chance to try and steer the conversation away by asking Mrs. Publicist an unrelated question or two. Nope. In the middle of chewing his bite, Mr. Wide snatched the conversational reins back and began telling us his family history.
“See, me and my brothers are down here to take my granddaddy to the doctor. He’s 107 years old,” Mr. Wide said. He then went into more detail about his 107 year old granddaddy and how he was getting to be kind of a mean soul in his old age, unafraid to speak his mind. They practically had to trick him, B.A. Baracus-style, to get him to come to the doctor at all. (“No fly! No fly!”) We gathered that they were all visiting from a neighboring county. Mr. Wide then went on to detail how his grandmother had lived until just a few years previous and his great-uncle had lived to 114. Some of this was interesting enough, if a bit out of the blue, so we listened politely, nodding and trying like hell to get through our salads as quickly as possible. Minutes later, he was still at it.
“And then, granddaddy didn’t want to give his concentration pictures to his kids, so he gave `em to me. I wanted to make copies of them, but I don’t want to mail them anywhere cause they’re valuable and I don’t trust the mail.”
“Uh, what are concentration pictures?” I asked.
Mr. Wide looked at me as if I had just asked if cheesecake is tasty or if gasoline is expensive. “WHERE are YOU frum, buddy?” he said.
“Mississippi,” I said. I know, I know--hardly my best defense.
As Mr. Wide then irately explained, “concentration pictures” were photographs taken during World War II by soldiers who helped liberate German Concentration Camps. Despite my government-sponsored education, I was, of course, familiar with the history of World War II, and the fact that pictures had been taken at Concentration Camps. However, I had never once heard the term “concentration picture” associated with them nor do I think I should be expected to since “concentration picture” is clearly missing the necessary noun “camp” that might have given me a bit more of a clue as to the definition of the term. This didn’t stop me from feeling a bit smaller in intellect, though, particularly since I was now being lectured on the subject by the likes of Mr. Wide.
The next ten minutes passed very slowly, as Mr. Wide continued to jump from topic to topic, dominating the table chatter. (It was NOT a conversation, as that involves more than one person speaking; it was a lecture.) I eventually tried to change subjects to one where he would have no firm ground to stand, by asking Mrs. Publicist if she was writing any stories for a local publication she and I have both freelanced for in the past. Unfortunately, she was writing a story about a historic building in a neighboring county--the very neighboring county Mr. Wide was from. Once again, he had a conversational foothold. He immediately began interrogating Mrs. Publicist about the county and managed to learn that she used to live there herself and still owned property there. He then lectured us at length on the history of the county, the latest gossip as to who was doing who wrong and who was in trouble with the law, etc. It was painful.
We had completely finished our salads before Mr. Wide had even made a noticeable dent in his. Fortunately, we all like each other, so no attempt was made to flee the table and strand one of us in Mr. Wide’s gravitational pull. Instead, we had each other’s backs, and brought up the topic of how great the desserts looked and how we should all go see what was available. With that, we made our escape.
I think Mrs. A was a bit worried about how their salad lunche0n would go, since they've never done anything like it before. There was much hand-wringing over whether or not they had enough salads or whether the venue they'd chosen to hold this in was big enough. However, when we arrived, everything seemed to be going gangbusters business. Though the hall they used was small, there was sufficient seating space and patron turnover to keep things rolling right along. The salads were also outstanding. However, some of the dining company turned out to be every bit as quirky as you might expect from “liberry” patrons.
While there were enough seats to accommodate our employee delegation, the seating was not all together, so Mrs. A, Mrs. B and Mrs. J sat at one table while Mrs. C, Mrs. Publicist and I sat at another. Before we could even start in on our salads, a very wide middle-aged man sat down in the other spare place at our table bearing the most enormous plate of salad I’ve ever seen. The simplest and most accurate description of this man’s plate of salad is to call it convex; it was a heaping, rounded dome of salad and it retained that shape for quite some time because this man would not stop flapping his salad hole long enough to eat any of it. From the moment he sat down until the three of us were finally able to disengage from him and flee the building some fifteen minutes later, this man ate maybe–MAYBE—four bites of his salad.
“I thought at least one of you would have shown up to that meeting up in Morgantown,” the man said. This was his opening line to us as he sat down and it was made in a very accusatory tone for someone none of us knew at all, nor he us. However, none of us knew that none of us knew this man, so we all just sort of gave each other odd looks while the man proceeded to hold us personally accountable for not being at a meeting the subject of which none of us had any idea about. Turns out, the meeting was something to do with a possible new levee or dam which this guy claimed could somehow cause the river levels in our neck to rise by 30 feet. We’d never heard of any of it and said so, which seemed to irritate Mr. Wide & Mouthy. He paused to take his first bite, giving me the chance to try and steer the conversation away by asking Mrs. Publicist an unrelated question or two. Nope. In the middle of chewing his bite, Mr. Wide snatched the conversational reins back and began telling us his family history.
“See, me and my brothers are down here to take my granddaddy to the doctor. He’s 107 years old,” Mr. Wide said. He then went into more detail about his 107 year old granddaddy and how he was getting to be kind of a mean soul in his old age, unafraid to speak his mind. They practically had to trick him, B.A. Baracus-style, to get him to come to the doctor at all. (“No fly! No fly!”) We gathered that they were all visiting from a neighboring county. Mr. Wide then went on to detail how his grandmother had lived until just a few years previous and his great-uncle had lived to 114. Some of this was interesting enough, if a bit out of the blue, so we listened politely, nodding and trying like hell to get through our salads as quickly as possible. Minutes later, he was still at it.
“And then, granddaddy didn’t want to give his concentration pictures to his kids, so he gave `em to me. I wanted to make copies of them, but I don’t want to mail them anywhere cause they’re valuable and I don’t trust the mail.”
“Uh, what are concentration pictures?” I asked.
Mr. Wide looked at me as if I had just asked if cheesecake is tasty or if gasoline is expensive. “WHERE are YOU frum, buddy?” he said.
“Mississippi,” I said. I know, I know--hardly my best defense.
As Mr. Wide then irately explained, “concentration pictures” were photographs taken during World War II by soldiers who helped liberate German Concentration Camps. Despite my government-sponsored education, I was, of course, familiar with the history of World War II, and the fact that pictures had been taken at Concentration Camps. However, I had never once heard the term “concentration picture” associated with them nor do I think I should be expected to since “concentration picture” is clearly missing the necessary noun “camp” that might have given me a bit more of a clue as to the definition of the term. This didn’t stop me from feeling a bit smaller in intellect, though, particularly since I was now being lectured on the subject by the likes of Mr. Wide.
The next ten minutes passed very slowly, as Mr. Wide continued to jump from topic to topic, dominating the table chatter. (It was NOT a conversation, as that involves more than one person speaking; it was a lecture.) I eventually tried to change subjects to one where he would have no firm ground to stand, by asking Mrs. Publicist if she was writing any stories for a local publication she and I have both freelanced for in the past. Unfortunately, she was writing a story about a historic building in a neighboring county--the very neighboring county Mr. Wide was from. Once again, he had a conversational foothold. He immediately began interrogating Mrs. Publicist about the county and managed to learn that she used to live there herself and still owned property there. He then lectured us at length on the history of the county, the latest gossip as to who was doing who wrong and who was in trouble with the law, etc. It was painful.
We had completely finished our salads before Mr. Wide had even made a noticeable dent in his. Fortunately, we all like each other, so no attempt was made to flee the table and strand one of us in Mr. Wide’s gravitational pull. Instead, we had each other’s backs, and brought up the topic of how great the desserts looked and how we should all go see what was available. With that, we made our escape.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #50
SETTING: My “liberry” shortly after a OUAW story time session. Little Kevin and Little Chuck Martin are at the circ-desk checking out books when their mom notices something is amiss.
MOM: Chuck, where is your shoe?
CHUCK: I don't know.
MOM: Where did you have it last?
CHUCK: I don't know.
As we are seconds away from closing and I want all patrons to leave, I dash to the children's room to look for Chuck's shoe. That Chuck had lost his shoe was hardly surprising. Not that the kid's dumb, or anything. In fact, he's pretty sharp. He actually once negotiated with me as to how many stories he was willing to sit through before he would stop paying attention to me and read his Calvin & Hobbes book instead. (Two. The answer is two.) He'd probably left his shoe behind on purpose just so a big deal would be made about it.
Sure enough, I found Chuck's shoe beneath the kid's computer where he'd been minutes earlier. I passed it to his mother, who passed it to Chuck.
MOM: And what do we say to Mr. JUICE?
CHUCK: Thanks, Mr. JUICE. You're the best.
ME: Whoo hoo!
CHUCK: You're really really super. You can't be touched. Nobody beats your high score.
It was only then that I realized how backhandedly disingenuous Chuck's comments were, despite his cheerful tone. That a kid so young could wield sarcasm so deftly was impressive. The little shit.
MOM: Chuck, where is your shoe?
CHUCK: I don't know.
MOM: Where did you have it last?
CHUCK: I don't know.
As we are seconds away from closing and I want all patrons to leave, I dash to the children's room to look for Chuck's shoe. That Chuck had lost his shoe was hardly surprising. Not that the kid's dumb, or anything. In fact, he's pretty sharp. He actually once negotiated with me as to how many stories he was willing to sit through before he would stop paying attention to me and read his Calvin & Hobbes book instead. (Two. The answer is two.) He'd probably left his shoe behind on purpose just so a big deal would be made about it.
Sure enough, I found Chuck's shoe beneath the kid's computer where he'd been minutes earlier. I passed it to his mother, who passed it to Chuck.
MOM: And what do we say to Mr. JUICE?
CHUCK: Thanks, Mr. JUICE. You're the best.
ME: Whoo hoo!
CHUCK: You're really really super. You can't be touched. Nobody beats your high score.
It was only then that I realized how backhandedly disingenuous Chuck's comments were, despite his cheerful tone. That a kid so young could wield sarcasm so deftly was impressive. The little shit.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Urf Day
We chose Earth Day as the theme for last week's story hour, since Earth Day was Saturday, and all. So we read ecology-related stories to the kids, did crafts that were all environmentally friendly, served them a snack of twigs and berries on free range paper plates (okay, it was actually Doritos and Teddy Grahams and just normal paper plates) and gave `em juice boxes to drink from which we’ll recycle this week into a new craft. We then took `em outside and let them watch a city employee plant a dogwood tree in our side yard, which we’ll dig up in a year or so and transport to our new building. I was going to make all the kids give it a big ol’ hug too, but we were pressed for time.
As you may be able to tell from the above paragraph, I have mixed feelings about Earth Day. It's not really the day itself or the celebration thereof. I believe wholeheartedly protecting the environment, not polluting the hell out of it either by fume or refuse, recycling our crap as much as humanly possible, utilizing as much alternative energy sources as are feasible, being responsible, not clear cutting the shit out of everything and, Oh, I don’t know, maybe getting some damn fuel-cell vehicles on the market. What I have more of a problem with is a certain flavor of hippy tree hugger that gravitates to the environment’s cause and the enormous non-biodegradable plastic drums of naiveté they often haul in with them.
Case in point, one of the books Mrs. C chose for me to read to the kiddies this week: For the Love of Our Earth by P.K. Hallinan. I don’t think I would have read them this book at all, had I had the good sense to preview it in advance of actually reading it to the kids. The book was harmless enough, I suppose, and most of its message went over their heads anyway. However, as I was reading it aloud I was angered by the overwhelming sense that this pie-eyed, 45 degrees from reality book’s major thesis statement was that if kids are merely friendly to the environment, suddenly there will no longer be any war, all races, creeds, religions and the handicapped will all suddenly start getting along and we'll all have cake and pie and everything! I'm paraphrasing, sure, and I was exaggerating about the cake and pie, but the bit about picking up litter ending war pretty much sums the message of this book. It's an enormous pen and ink hippy-pot-dream conjured by someone who'd been listening to too much Yoko Ono music. I really expected some kind of pro-hemp message before the end of it, but I think Hallinan ran out of pages, or smoked those or something. The final pages of the book depict those previously described ethnically diverse and handicapable children all holding hands and saving the earth and peace reigns forever more, with cake and pie.
Why is it that this book makes me so angry? Am I just that jaded and cynical that a sweet little book about people somehow learning to get along and take responsibility for cleaning up the planet can infuriate me so? I mean, isn't this one the basic tennants of my own religion of Christianity—to love one another and stop being an asshole? By all rights, I should embrace this book. Perhaps I should even give it a big old hug and a slice of pie, since it too is a tree product. But I can't because the message of this book was not only naive but irresponsible to boot. Stupid hippies!
After we planted our tree, we came back in and read one more ecologically sound book, but this time it was one I'd previewed in advance and approved of, called Be a Friend to Trees, by Patricia Lauber and Holly Keller. Despite the fact that this book does depict two kids HUGGING A TREE on the cover, it's a far more realistic and sound way of looking at the issue. The book explains that trees are very important, not only to the environment to but to our day to day lives since we use quite a bit of tree-byproducts. The book also spends a good deal of time going over how trees work, why they are important to our oxygen supply and to the animals that live in them, how recycling things helps, how kids can help by not wastefully using so many tree-byproducts and that planting new trees is a good idea. I was really enjoying this book as I read it, but it caused the kids' eyes to glaze over and two of them eventually began doing gymnastics as a form of protest against the boredom. So I skipped to the end, told em to plant more trees and reuse grocery sacks, then switched to a large picture book about a lady with a big colorful hat.
That held their attention pretty good.
As you may be able to tell from the above paragraph, I have mixed feelings about Earth Day. It's not really the day itself or the celebration thereof. I believe wholeheartedly protecting the environment, not polluting the hell out of it either by fume or refuse, recycling our crap as much as humanly possible, utilizing as much alternative energy sources as are feasible, being responsible, not clear cutting the shit out of everything and, Oh, I don’t know, maybe getting some damn fuel-cell vehicles on the market. What I have more of a problem with is a certain flavor of hippy tree hugger that gravitates to the environment’s cause and the enormous non-biodegradable plastic drums of naiveté they often haul in with them.
Case in point, one of the books Mrs. C chose for me to read to the kiddies this week: For the Love of Our Earth by P.K. Hallinan. I don’t think I would have read them this book at all, had I had the good sense to preview it in advance of actually reading it to the kids. The book was harmless enough, I suppose, and most of its message went over their heads anyway. However, as I was reading it aloud I was angered by the overwhelming sense that this pie-eyed, 45 degrees from reality book’s major thesis statement was that if kids are merely friendly to the environment, suddenly there will no longer be any war, all races, creeds, religions and the handicapped will all suddenly start getting along and we'll all have cake and pie and everything! I'm paraphrasing, sure, and I was exaggerating about the cake and pie, but the bit about picking up litter ending war pretty much sums the message of this book. It's an enormous pen and ink hippy-pot-dream conjured by someone who'd been listening to too much Yoko Ono music. I really expected some kind of pro-hemp message before the end of it, but I think Hallinan ran out of pages, or smoked those or something. The final pages of the book depict those previously described ethnically diverse and handicapable children all holding hands and saving the earth and peace reigns forever more, with cake and pie.
Why is it that this book makes me so angry? Am I just that jaded and cynical that a sweet little book about people somehow learning to get along and take responsibility for cleaning up the planet can infuriate me so? I mean, isn't this one the basic tennants of my own religion of Christianity—to love one another and stop being an asshole? By all rights, I should embrace this book. Perhaps I should even give it a big old hug and a slice of pie, since it too is a tree product. But I can't because the message of this book was not only naive but irresponsible to boot. Stupid hippies!
After we planted our tree, we came back in and read one more ecologically sound book, but this time it was one I'd previewed in advance and approved of, called Be a Friend to Trees, by Patricia Lauber and Holly Keller. Despite the fact that this book does depict two kids HUGGING A TREE on the cover, it's a far more realistic and sound way of looking at the issue. The book explains that trees are very important, not only to the environment to but to our day to day lives since we use quite a bit of tree-byproducts. The book also spends a good deal of time going over how trees work, why they are important to our oxygen supply and to the animals that live in them, how recycling things helps, how kids can help by not wastefully using so many tree-byproducts and that planting new trees is a good idea. I was really enjoying this book as I read it, but it caused the kids' eyes to glaze over and two of them eventually began doing gymnastics as a form of protest against the boredom. So I skipped to the end, told em to plant more trees and reuse grocery sacks, then switched to a large picture book about a lady with a big colorful hat.
That held their attention pretty good.
Monday, April 03, 2006
First words
While reading Tedd Arnold's children's book Parts for last week's OUAW session, I came to the page where the main character complains that something wet and gray fell out of his nose, a substance he comes to believe is part of his brain.
"I don't think it's part of his brain," I said, turning to my audience of one five-year old boy. "I think it's a booger." Now I said that because, while the book never actually spells out what the gray substance is, I'm not the kind of guy who passes up the chance to say "booger" to a five-year old. It's a guaranteed laugh line, or so I thought.
"A what?" the five-year-old asked.
"A booger," I said, grinning. Realization did not dawn on this kid's face, though.
"What's that?" he said.
Aw hell, I thought. This kid doesn't know what a booger is! And if he doesn't know what a booger is at age five, this can only mean that his mom, who was sitting right there beside him, has kept him sheltered from the knowledge or has taught him some euphamism for boogers that she finds preferable. Now I'd just gone and warped his fragile little mind with secret knowledge—ironically, the very kind of parentally hidden secret knowledge that the main character of Parts is railing against in the first place!
"Uhh," I said, afraid of what words to choose next. While I don't think booger is the sort of word that should be kept from children, (nor from the airwaves; thank you, Dr. Johnny Fever), I didn't want to crap all over this mom's choice to do so. I felt like I'd just accidentally ruined the ending of The Sixth Sense or the Usual Suspects. The kid sensed my trepidation and glanced up at his mom for help.
"You know," she said, "like when you blow your nose?"
"Oh!" he said with a smile and a laugh. Well, at least he found the concept of boogers funny.
So I proceeded with the story until the page where the main character finds a loose tooth.
"Have you had any loose teeth, yet?" I asked the kid.
"No."
"Well, that's on the way for you soon," I said. Then, I thought of an illustrative example from my own childhood that would make for a fun mid-story aside. "Just be sure not to trust your teachers," I began. "Cause when I was in the first grade I had a loose tooth and my teacher told me to come up so she could feel how loose it was. She told me she wasn't going to pull it, she just wanted to feel it. But then she pulled it anyway." Only then did the meaning behind my words start to sink into my skull. Oh, hell! I had just told this kid not to trust his teachers, implying heavily that they were out to get him! In front of his booger-paranoid mom, no less!
"Um... It didn't hurt, though," I lamely tried as a save. I didn't make eye contact with his mom for a while after that, for fear of a dirty look. She didn't yell at me and haul her child away, either, and eventually I was able to reign in my subversive mouth and just read the stories with no added commentary.
I'd been planning on breaking out >Walter the Farting Dog in OUAW, but now I'm pretty sure it would result in some kind of mental distress for that family.
"I don't think it's part of his brain," I said, turning to my audience of one five-year old boy. "I think it's a booger." Now I said that because, while the book never actually spells out what the gray substance is, I'm not the kind of guy who passes up the chance to say "booger" to a five-year old. It's a guaranteed laugh line, or so I thought.
"A what?" the five-year-old asked.
"A booger," I said, grinning. Realization did not dawn on this kid's face, though.
"What's that?" he said.
Aw hell, I thought. This kid doesn't know what a booger is! And if he doesn't know what a booger is at age five, this can only mean that his mom, who was sitting right there beside him, has kept him sheltered from the knowledge or has taught him some euphamism for boogers that she finds preferable. Now I'd just gone and warped his fragile little mind with secret knowledge—ironically, the very kind of parentally hidden secret knowledge that the main character of Parts is railing against in the first place!
"Uhh," I said, afraid of what words to choose next. While I don't think booger is the sort of word that should be kept from children, (nor from the airwaves; thank you, Dr. Johnny Fever), I didn't want to crap all over this mom's choice to do so. I felt like I'd just accidentally ruined the ending of The Sixth Sense or the Usual Suspects. The kid sensed my trepidation and glanced up at his mom for help.
"You know," she said, "like when you blow your nose?"
"Oh!" he said with a smile and a laugh. Well, at least he found the concept of boogers funny.
So I proceeded with the story until the page where the main character finds a loose tooth.
"Have you had any loose teeth, yet?" I asked the kid.
"No."
"Well, that's on the way for you soon," I said. Then, I thought of an illustrative example from my own childhood that would make for a fun mid-story aside. "Just be sure not to trust your teachers," I began. "Cause when I was in the first grade I had a loose tooth and my teacher told me to come up so she could feel how loose it was. She told me she wasn't going to pull it, she just wanted to feel it. But then she pulled it anyway." Only then did the meaning behind my words start to sink into my skull. Oh, hell! I had just told this kid not to trust his teachers, implying heavily that they were out to get him! In front of his booger-paranoid mom, no less!
"Um... It didn't hurt, though," I lamely tried as a save. I didn't make eye contact with his mom for a while after that, for fear of a dirty look. She didn't yell at me and haul her child away, either, and eventually I was able to reign in my subversive mouth and just read the stories with no added commentary.
I'd been planning on breaking out >Walter the Farting Dog in OUAW, but now I'm pretty sure it would result in some kind of mental distress for that family.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Buddy's Surprise
I've only written about Buddy a couple of times here. He's one of the clients of the local Unobstructed Doors center for the mentally handicapped and is in the library at least twice a week, often accompanied by Harry the Killer Midget. Usually there's not much to write about when it comes to Buddy and Harry. Usually, that is. They almost visit us on Mondays and Wednesdays, around 1:30p or so. And every time Buddy comes in, he calls me by name, tells me "Hi" and then asks where Mrs. J is at. Buddy loves Mrs. J, who I imagine he sees as a grandmother-type. (She is a grandmother-type, several times over.) Mrs. J, in turn, likes Buddy. So when Buddy comes in she is always his focus.
Our weekly ritual, therefore, is that every Monday Buddy comes in and asks where Mrs. J is and every Monday I tell him she's already left for the day, because she has. Then, every Wednesday, he comes in and asks where Mrs. J is and every Wednesday I tell him she's upstairs, cause she's almost always upstairs shelving books by that time of day. This pattern has repeated itself for well over a year now with few alterations and I'm more than willing to play my part in it because we all really like Buddy.
Today, Buddy came in, said Hi to me, and then Asked where Mrs. J was at. Mrs. J happened to be downstairs at that moment, but Buddy couldn't see her due to his line of sight being obstrutced by our bulletin board that's attached to a support post.
"She's right there," I said, pointing to where she was standing.
Buddy was pleasantly astounded.
Our weekly ritual, therefore, is that every Monday Buddy comes in and asks where Mrs. J is and every Monday I tell him she's already left for the day, because she has. Then, every Wednesday, he comes in and asks where Mrs. J is and every Wednesday I tell him she's upstairs, cause she's almost always upstairs shelving books by that time of day. This pattern has repeated itself for well over a year now with few alterations and I'm more than willing to play my part in it because we all really like Buddy.
Today, Buddy came in, said Hi to me, and then Asked where Mrs. J was at. Mrs. J happened to be downstairs at that moment, but Buddy couldn't see her due to his line of sight being obstrutced by our bulletin board that's attached to a support post.
"She's right there," I said, pointing to where she was standing.
Buddy was pleasantly astounded.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #46
SETTING: My "Liberry". A late-middle-aged female patron approaches the circ desk.
PATRON: I need some help. I don't know nothing `bout computers, but I need to help my granddaughter with her schoolwork. She's got a report to write about Sweden and I need information about it. You know—the people, the government, the culture, the history. Maybe some recipes.
ME: Okay. I think we can help you out. (I search the OPAC for a bit.) Well, we have a Scandanavian travel guide that will have some of what you're looking for in it. Other than that, we do have some encyclopedias that can be checked out that will have more information on the history, and such.
(I write down the call numbers for her.)
PATRON: Also, I need something else. I got into a disagreement with this fellow a while back...
(Upon hearing just this much, I am immediately terrified to my soul that I'm about to be asked some kind of major legal question and will have to go cart volume after volume of the state code of law to the desk to look up some obscure regulation about how many deer carcasses are permitted to be strung up in a
front yard at any given time, or something similarly absurd.)
PATRON: ... and he and I was arguing over what the real history of the Illuminati is. So I'll need some information about them, too.
(Long pause)
ME: Um. Okay. (I do some more OPACing) Well, the only thing we have that's coming up is Dan Brown's book Angels & Demons.
PATRON: (Disdainfully) Uh huh. Well, I don't want none of that. I wouldn't read that anyway, cause I don't hold with Dan Brown.
ME: (I then search the records of our entire consortium.) The only other thing available is a book called Emp0wer the Pe0ple: a 7-Step Plan to 0verthrow the C0nspiracy that is Stealing Your M0ney and Freed0m. We don't own that, though.
PATRON: (Sighes) I'll just take the Sweden books, then.
PATRON: I need some help. I don't know nothing `bout computers, but I need to help my granddaughter with her schoolwork. She's got a report to write about Sweden and I need information about it. You know—the people, the government, the culture, the history. Maybe some recipes.
ME: Okay. I think we can help you out. (I search the OPAC for a bit.) Well, we have a Scandanavian travel guide that will have some of what you're looking for in it. Other than that, we do have some encyclopedias that can be checked out that will have more information on the history, and such.
(I write down the call numbers for her.)
PATRON: Also, I need something else. I got into a disagreement with this fellow a while back...
(Upon hearing just this much, I am immediately terrified to my soul that I'm about to be asked some kind of major legal question and will have to go cart volume after volume of the state code of law to the desk to look up some obscure regulation about how many deer carcasses are permitted to be strung up in a
front yard at any given time, or something similarly absurd.)
PATRON: ... and he and I was arguing over what the real history of the Illuminati is. So I'll need some information about them, too.
(Long pause)
ME: Um. Okay. (I do some more OPACing) Well, the only thing we have that's coming up is Dan Brown's book Angels & Demons.
PATRON: (Disdainfully) Uh huh. Well, I don't want none of that. I wouldn't read that anyway, cause I don't hold with Dan Brown.
ME: (I then search the records of our entire consortium.) The only other thing available is a book called Emp0wer the Pe0ple: a 7-Step Plan to 0verthrow the C0nspiracy that is Stealing Your M0ney and Freed0m. We don't own that, though.
PATRON: (Sighes) I'll just take the Sweden books, then.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #45
PATRON: Hey, do you got any tax forms here?
ME: Yes, sir. They're right behind you.
PATRON: (Turns and notices the large and obvious display of tax forms he missed on the way in the door.) Uh, thanks.
(The patron leafs through a few forms and booklets, picking out what he needs from the Federal side of the shelf.)
PATRON: Uh, you got any more state forms?
ME: (Sighes loudly within head) Yes. They're on the other side of the shelf there, in the yellow bin.
(Long pause)
PATRON: No they're not.
ME: Huh?
PATRON: It's empty.
ME: Oh. Oops.
ME: Yes, sir. They're right behind you.
PATRON: (Turns and notices the large and obvious display of tax forms he missed on the way in the door.) Uh, thanks.
(The patron leafs through a few forms and booklets, picking out what he needs from the Federal side of the shelf.)
PATRON: Uh, you got any more state forms?
ME: (Sighes loudly within head) Yes. They're on the other side of the shelf there, in the yellow bin.
(Long pause)
PATRON: No they're not.
ME: Huh?
PATRON: It's empty.
ME: Oh. Oops.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Hey, kid, isn't that attitude a little big for you?
I came in last Wednesday to find the library eat up with kids. It wasn’t even a summer reading program day, so I had no explanation. Soon I was told that this was a sort of class-visit from a local summer day-care program. The kids in this day-care program ranged from probably 6 to 12 years of age. It was a pre-planned event, one which allowed us to take contact information in advance with which we made new library cards for all the listed kids who didn’t already have one.
During the visit, Mrs. A noticed two girls trying to log themselves onto an idle patron computer. When she approached them, one of them was typing in “Heather” as the login name, thinking that was going to work.
Mrs. A related the following conversation to me.
MRS. A: Excuse me, girls. How old are you?
HEATHER: Twelve.
MRS. A: I’m sorry, but we don’t allow children under 13 to use the computers without their parents supervision. It’s library policy.
HEATHER: (Puffing herself up with plenty of attitude) No, but my mom signed a permission slip so I could use them.
MRS. A: The permission slips are to let kids 13 and older use the internet. You’re still 12.
HEATHER: (Getting in Mrs. A’s face—always a great idea) My MOM signed a permission slip!
MRS. A: Your mom does not override library policy.
HEATHER: You can call her and get her permission over the phone.
MRS. A: I’m not going to call her because it doesn’t matter if you have her permission; you’re still 12. Now get up and go back in the other room.
Little Miss Heather-pants was most unhappy about this and walked around wielding her newly blossoming 12-year-old-girl attitude like a 60 pound Claymore sword that she could scarcely yet lift. Her cohort in computer crime, a miss Holly Goheavily, was soon to develop into a troublesome pest as well.
When it came time to check out books, Holly Goheavily didn’t have her library card. We hadn't made her one because she already had a patron account with us in the system and her mother was in possession of the actual card. Holly was annoyed that she couldn’t check anything out and tried to argue with Mrs. C that she should be given a brand new card. Mrs. C explained that we wouldn’t be doing that, as she already had an existing card.
“But my brother already has a card and you just gave him a new one!” Holly countered. Sure enough, Holly’s little brother Bratt had just been given a new card, but this was because he DID NOT have one already listed in our database. Holly could not be reasoned with on this point and kept repeating that he already had one because her mom got cards for all of them at the same time.
“Well, he only has one card now and that’s the one we just gave him.”
Holly left angry.
After the class had departed, Mrs. A and C fled the building, leaving me and Mrs. B to run the place. Half an hour or so later, Holly Goheavily and Bratt Goheavily returned, accompanied by Mom Goheavily. Mom marched up to the desk and slapped down two library cards, both of which had Bratt Goheavily’s name on them and slid them toward me.
“How come my son has two cards but my daughter can’t have two?” she said. “This is the one he got today and this one I got months ago.”
I picked up our barcode scanner and zapped the indicated older card. A little window popped up on my screen indicating that this barcode number had no patron record associated with it.
“This one’s not an active card, Ma’am,” I said. “We did double check that your son didn’t have an existing card before we issued the new one and there wasn’t one in the system. Clearly he had one at one time, since we gave you this card, but I can’t say how the account for it disappeared.”
This seemed to satisfy her on that point. I took the dead card from her and threw it away.
After looking around a while, Mom Goheavily returned to the desk with a book from the children’s room's Young Adult section.
“Is there any way to tell what age group these books are for?” she asked.
“Well, sometimes they have a suggested age group printed on the back or on the inside cover,” Mrs. B said. They turned the book at several angles, but there didn’t seem to be an age guide on it.
“It’s just that some of those books in there are filthy,” Mom Goheavily said. “The language and the… the, well, I don’t want my daughter reading them.”
Mrs. B held the book up to show the spine-label on it.
“Ma’am, this is a Young Adult book. If you don’t want your daughter reading young adult material, you might want to tell her to stay away from it.” Mrs. B pointed into the children’s room, where Holly Goheavily was nose deep in the YA section. Mom Goheavily then proceeded to completely freak out on Holly, ordering her to put that book she had down right then and not to take any more from that section. Holly, for her part, tried to bring out her own 60 pound attitude sword, but couldn’t get much lift against such a forceful attitude as her mother’s.
When it came time to check out, Mom Goheavily asked for a parental permission form for her daughter to use the internet. We gave it to her and she filled it out while I checked out more books for Bratt. I was dubious about Holly’s age, though. Mrs. A had not said she was 12 in her earlier story, but I gathered that she likely was. With mom standing right there, though, I figured if I put the question to her she would have to tell the truth.
“And are you 12 or 13?” I asked.
“I’m 13,” Holly said.
“She’s 13,” Mom said at the same time.
“No she’s not,” Bratt said.
“Shhhh!!” Mom said, giving Bratt the look of death. Then, in a low whisper, like I couldn’t hear her clearly from a mere two and a half feet away, she said, “She’s thirteen! She’ll be thirteen in less than a month.”
Yes, that’s the lesson all parents should be teaching their kids: how to lie to get what you want.
We might have let Holly slide on this technicality had she and her mother not perpetrated such deception. Unfortunately for her, the entire staff now knows her true age and her birthday's been circled on her permission form. If she wants to use a computer within the next month, she'll be playing a lot of Mag!c School Bus and Barn3y games, but no internet.
During the visit, Mrs. A noticed two girls trying to log themselves onto an idle patron computer. When she approached them, one of them was typing in “Heather” as the login name, thinking that was going to work.
Mrs. A related the following conversation to me.
MRS. A: Excuse me, girls. How old are you?
HEATHER: Twelve.
MRS. A: I’m sorry, but we don’t allow children under 13 to use the computers without their parents supervision. It’s library policy.
HEATHER: (Puffing herself up with plenty of attitude) No, but my mom signed a permission slip so I could use them.
MRS. A: The permission slips are to let kids 13 and older use the internet. You’re still 12.
HEATHER: (Getting in Mrs. A’s face—always a great idea) My MOM signed a permission slip!
MRS. A: Your mom does not override library policy.
HEATHER: You can call her and get her permission over the phone.
MRS. A: I’m not going to call her because it doesn’t matter if you have her permission; you’re still 12. Now get up and go back in the other room.
Little Miss Heather-pants was most unhappy about this and walked around wielding her newly blossoming 12-year-old-girl attitude like a 60 pound Claymore sword that she could scarcely yet lift. Her cohort in computer crime, a miss Holly Goheavily, was soon to develop into a troublesome pest as well.
When it came time to check out books, Holly Goheavily didn’t have her library card. We hadn't made her one because she already had a patron account with us in the system and her mother was in possession of the actual card. Holly was annoyed that she couldn’t check anything out and tried to argue with Mrs. C that she should be given a brand new card. Mrs. C explained that we wouldn’t be doing that, as she already had an existing card.
“But my brother already has a card and you just gave him a new one!” Holly countered. Sure enough, Holly’s little brother Bratt had just been given a new card, but this was because he DID NOT have one already listed in our database. Holly could not be reasoned with on this point and kept repeating that he already had one because her mom got cards for all of them at the same time.
“Well, he only has one card now and that’s the one we just gave him.”
Holly left angry.
After the class had departed, Mrs. A and C fled the building, leaving me and Mrs. B to run the place. Half an hour or so later, Holly Goheavily and Bratt Goheavily returned, accompanied by Mom Goheavily. Mom marched up to the desk and slapped down two library cards, both of which had Bratt Goheavily’s name on them and slid them toward me.
“How come my son has two cards but my daughter can’t have two?” she said. “This is the one he got today and this one I got months ago.”
I picked up our barcode scanner and zapped the indicated older card. A little window popped up on my screen indicating that this barcode number had no patron record associated with it.
“This one’s not an active card, Ma’am,” I said. “We did double check that your son didn’t have an existing card before we issued the new one and there wasn’t one in the system. Clearly he had one at one time, since we gave you this card, but I can’t say how the account for it disappeared.”
This seemed to satisfy her on that point. I took the dead card from her and threw it away.
After looking around a while, Mom Goheavily returned to the desk with a book from the children’s room's Young Adult section.
“Is there any way to tell what age group these books are for?” she asked.
“Well, sometimes they have a suggested age group printed on the back or on the inside cover,” Mrs. B said. They turned the book at several angles, but there didn’t seem to be an age guide on it.
“It’s just that some of those books in there are filthy,” Mom Goheavily said. “The language and the… the, well, I don’t want my daughter reading them.”
Mrs. B held the book up to show the spine-label on it.
“Ma’am, this is a Young Adult book. If you don’t want your daughter reading young adult material, you might want to tell her to stay away from it.” Mrs. B pointed into the children’s room, where Holly Goheavily was nose deep in the YA section. Mom Goheavily then proceeded to completely freak out on Holly, ordering her to put that book she had down right then and not to take any more from that section. Holly, for her part, tried to bring out her own 60 pound attitude sword, but couldn’t get much lift against such a forceful attitude as her mother’s.
When it came time to check out, Mom Goheavily asked for a parental permission form for her daughter to use the internet. We gave it to her and she filled it out while I checked out more books for Bratt. I was dubious about Holly’s age, though. Mrs. A had not said she was 12 in her earlier story, but I gathered that she likely was. With mom standing right there, though, I figured if I put the question to her she would have to tell the truth.
“And are you 12 or 13?” I asked.
“I’m 13,” Holly said.
“She’s 13,” Mom said at the same time.
“No she’s not,” Bratt said.
“Shhhh!!” Mom said, giving Bratt the look of death. Then, in a low whisper, like I couldn’t hear her clearly from a mere two and a half feet away, she said, “She’s thirteen! She’ll be thirteen in less than a month.”
Yes, that’s the lesson all parents should be teaching their kids: how to lie to get what you want.
We might have let Holly slide on this technicality had she and her mother not perpetrated such deception. Unfortunately for her, the entire staff now knows her true age and her birthday's been circled on her permission form. If she wants to use a computer within the next month, she'll be playing a lot of Mag!c School Bus and Barn3y games, but no internet.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
The Founding Fathers Won't Leave me Alone (PART 2)
I returned to work on Wednesday still curious as to what our Bill of
Rights, Declaration of Independence and Constitution seeking patron,
Grandpa Sam, was really up to. Unfortunately, Mrs. A had no new news
about it.
"Have you called, MR. ROB?" I asked. Seemed a good
idea, since the gentleman had initially mistaken me for the college
librarian Mr. Rob when he first phoned us.
Mrs. A phoned Mr. Rob
and learned that Grandpa Sam had indeed called and asked for those
documents. Mr. Rob had told him he would make the appropriate copies and
have them waiting at the desk for him. I doubt Mr. Rob would even have
charged the man, but Grandpa Sam never came to collect them.
Beyond
that, the only news was that most of the local libraries were gathering
the materials in advance of Grandpa Sam's appearance just so they'd be
ready. He'd really put the fear of God into them over the matter. In
some ways, this is probably good, as it's always a good idea to be on
guard against folks actively trying to find fault with you. However,
from all indications, Grandpa Sam wasn't finding any fault with anyone,
so he was just making up fault at his whim and lying about it to
Arkansas sentator's offices and who knows how many other such places. It
made me angry.
We still had no further clue as to who Grandpa
Sam was, exactly, but what we did have was the contact information for
his church. I decided once again to use it, hoping to get in touch with
the church's minister so I could alert him to what was going on.
I
phoned the chuch's number but no one answered. I did get an answering
machine, so I left a message for the pastor to phone us at the "liberry"
when he received the message.
Hours passed with no call.
Around
4, I began to get antsy over this. Being a Wednesday and the church
being a Baptist church, I thought it was pretty likely they would have a
Wednesday night service or prayer meeting. This would probably be
Grandpa Sam's earliest opportunity to start spreading more of his false
rumors. I didn't like the idea that these rumors would go uncontested,
so I got out the phone book and decided to phone the pastor at home.
When
the pastor answered, I explained who I was and apologized for phoning
him at home. I told him that I wanted to alert him to a situation
involving a member of his congregation that I thought he might need to
know about. Then I told him the story of what had occurred on Tuesday
afternoon, making sure to point out the gentleman's claim that he was an
associate pastor and bus-driver for this pastor's church. When I
finished, the pastor thanked me for bringing this to his attention. He
asked if the gentleman we'd dealt with was a tall gray-haired man and I
confirmed it. He then told me the man's name and said that, from what he
understood, this gentleman was now suffering from the early stages of
Alzheimer's and that this was pretty typical behavior from him. The
pastor also pointed out that the man was no longer the driver of the
church's bus, nor had he actually been to a service in quite some time.
Now
it all made sense. I know, from having had a grandmother who suffered
from Alzheimers, how confused and forgetful that disease can make a
person. For instance, my grandmother entirely forgot most of her close
relatives, once threatened to blow up a hospital if they didn't let her
leave and even punched her doctor full in the face. And much like
Grandpa Sam, you could hold a perfectly normal conversation with her for
quite some time and would never have known anything was amiss unless
she dropped something into the middle of it that didn't make any sense
or called you by someone else's name. I could easily see how Grandpa Sam
could phone all of the libraries and then somehow delude himself into
thinking they weren't helping him.
I apologized once again for
phoning the pastor at home, but he assured me it was not a problem and
that I was right to call in this case.
The situation still made
me sad, though. Was it really better to learn that Grandpa Sam had
hassled us and made us look bad not from malice or some kind of hidden
agenda, but because he was delusional? At least from the malice angle,
we would have had something to rail against. But delusion? That's just
too sad.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
The Founding Fathers Won't Leave me Alone (PART 1)
Yesterday, not too long into my shift, I took a phone call from an older
gentleman who wound up making our day far more perplexing and
frustrating than we could ever have anticipated.
He said, "Hello. I think I spoke to you earlier. Is this ROB?"
"No, this is JUICE," I replied.
He
said I sounded just like a ROB at another library he had spoken to that
morning. I later deduced that he must have meant Mr. Rob from the
community college.
The gentleman, let's call him Grandpa Sam,
said he was calling to see if we had copies of the Declaration of
Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
"Sure," I told him. "We'll have those in several books here."
"But can I get a copy of them?"
"I
don't see why not," I said. "We can photocopy them for you , or if all
else fails I can pull them off the internet and print them out. We would
charge 10 cents per page for the prints, but it would be no trouble."
He
seemed suspicious of the truth of this, though. He then said he'd been
phoning area libraries all morning and none of them had copies of these
documents nor could they give him any. This seemed highly unlikely to
me, as they're all found in Encyclopedias and some of the federal
document books we and the other area libraries have. At least, the
public libraries do. I assured him that we had them in numerous forms
and could print or copy them for him.
"Are you sure?" he again asked.
"I have no doubt whatsoever."
He asked where we were located and I gave him directions.
"And this is the TOWN-A library?" he asked.
"No, this is the TRI-METRO County Public Library. There is no TOWN-A library, though we are located in TOWN-A."
The man said he'd see me later in the afternoon and hung up.
This
call seemed very odd to me from the get go. I told Mrs. A about it and
we talked about which books would be the best ones to use for finding
these documents should he come in. True enough, there were quite a few
to choose from. She thought it very odd that he would claim no other
area library had them or was willing to give them over. Particularly if
he'd spoken with Mr. Rob, who is one of the most service-oriented
librarians around. Something was fishy.
She told me not to worry
about it, because she didn't think he would come in at all. Mrs. A
figured he was just testing us to see what we'd say to his request. I
was sure she was right about his testing, but I thought he was likely to
come in.
And he did.
Mid-way through the afternoon,
Grandpa Sam arrived. He was a tall man of at least 70 years, I'd say. He
asked if I was JUICE and said he'd spoken with me earlier. Mrs. A
happened to come into the room at that moment, so I introduced him to
her, explaining that this was The Guy. He asked once again if we could
give him copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights
and the Constitution. Mrs. A told him we sure could and that we had them
available in several sources in the library which we could photocopy
for him. She did explain that it would be cheaper for him if we were to
just print them from the internet, as we charge .25 cents for
photocopies but only .10 for prints. He said that sounded fine, but he
needed to know how much because he was on a fixed income. While they
were chatting about this, I'd gone over to our on-line OPAC and found
all three documents from us.gov websites, cut and pasted them into a
Word document and tallied up the pages to 23, meaning it would cost
$2.30. He said that was much less than he was expecting, he had that on
him so he would go ahead and take it.
While I was fixing the
pagination for the documents, so that each section would begin new page
numbering, he chatted amiably with one of our other patrons. He
explained that he was an associate pastor for a local Baptist church
where he also drove the church bus. He then gave both the other patron
and Mrs. A a Christian tract with his church's address on it. The lady
he was talking to was already a Christian, however, so he dropped out of
missionary mode and back into amiable chat mode. During the course of
their conversation, he explained that he had once been given a copy of
the Declaration of Independence at a local library and it was a nice
parchment reprint of the original document. Mrs. A explained that
several years back some state-government agency had sent a box of these
around to each library as a one-off deal, but she doubted if anyone had
any more of them.
Soon enough, I had Grandpa Sam's documents all
printed out and stapled together. He handed over $2.30 and thanked me
very much for my time and help. He thanked Mrs. A too, asking her name
once again. Then he departed. He came back a minute later and asked if
we could three hole punch his documents for him. I said, no problem,
removed the staples and three hole punched away. He offered to pay me
for this service, but I said that we didn't charge for it. He was good
to go, so he went.
Two hours later, Mrs. A received a phone call
from the office of a senator from Arkansas. She didn't remember the name
of the specific senator when she told me about this later, but said
that he was definitely from Arkansas. According to the person from the
senator's office, they had just received a phone call from a man from
TOWN-A who claimed he had just been to the TOWN-A library and had been
refused copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights
and the Constitution. Furthermore, this person had claimed to have been
to and/or to have contacted libraries all over the area and been turned
away by them all. The guy from the senator's office said that he found
these claims nearly unbelievable and he was just calling to confirm.
Mrs.
A told the senator's office guy that we had indeed been visited by this
gentleman, but that we had provided him with a copy of all the
documents he had requested and he had left with them in his hand. She
explained that the man's claim of being turned away by other libraries
was also highly suspect as all of the area libraries do have the
documents he wanted from multiple sources. She wasn't sure why this man
would phone an Arkansas senator and make these claims, but we had not
only given him precisely what he'd asked for and gone out of our way to
accommodate him, but he'd seemed more than pleased with our results.
The
guy from the senator's office suggested that the gentleman must have
been doing this as some sort of ploy to make it seem as though the Bush
Administration was somehow suppressing access to these documents. If
this was his agenda, however, he was going about it in a completely
dishonest way.
After hanging up with the guy and telling me about
what he'd said., Mrs. A and I discussed what should be done next. We
didn't like Grandpa Sam going around misrepresenting his experience at
our library nor of libraries in the area. I asked Mrs. A if she still
had the church tract the man had left, because I would be glad to phone
him up and confront him about it. Unfortunately, only the church's
contact information was printed on it and we found we could not remember
the man's name. My fear was that if this guy was going to the trouble
of calling a senator from Arkansas and he really was an associate
pastor, he would most likely start spreading his tales at his church as
well. As a Baptist church-goer myself, I know if a well-respected older
deacon or associate pastor made such claims at my church, the
congregation would be inclined to at least listen to what he had to say.
Hopefully, we'd start calling to confirm things ourselves, but humans
aren't always so careful. Granted, it didn't exactly make sense to us
that a Baptist would be stirring up false accusations against Bush, but
stranger things have happened.
After a bit, I decided I would
phone the church and speak to the minister there. If Grandpa Sam truly
was an associate pastor of the church was doing this and potentially
spreading false rumors, I wanted someone on the inside there to know the
truth. I phoned the church Tuesday afternoon, but no one answered.
Meanwhile Mrs. A was able to talk to several area librarians, some of
whom had also spoke with the gentleman by phone earlier. The one's who
had talked to him had invited him to come on by and they could print
copies of the requested documents, because they had sources for them
available. However, despite their invitations and his telling them he
was on his way, he had not been to any of them.
So after all this, I left work yesterday feeling frustrated and unhappy with the day.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Dreaming of Me (Ooooo, la la la... OooooooooOOOOO)
It was an oddly synchronous kind of day, today.
My best example: This afternoon a college-aged girl came into the library. She was dressed in her best Brittany On Her Off Day blue-jeans and tight hoodie over pastel shirt ensemble, complete with extra makeup. She said she'd been in last week and was told that all of our dream-interpretation books were checked out and overdue. She wanted to know if they had been returned yet. I knew the answer even before I looked `em up on the OPAC. Sure enough, still very much out and very much overdue.
"We do have a couple in our reference room," I offered.
"No. Yew can't check them out," she said. She left, disappointed.
Having missing or otherwise checked out dream dictionaries is nothing strange. They're harder to keep on the shelf than The Da Vinci Code. The patrons who want them never EVER want to simply look up stuff in our reference books on the subject. No, they want a book, or better still BOOKS, they can haul away and pour over for months on end. And they ALWAYS keep them for months on end. After all, it's not like they're going to stop dreaming! There's always a new dream coming down the ol' brain pipe that will require intensive interpretation and consarnit they'd better have a book, or better still BOOKS, on hand to make with the interpretin'. You practically have to have a court order and a crowbar to pry them out of their sweaty little hands. Well, almost always...
Fifteen minutes after the first girl left, a second girl came in and returned ALL of our dream dictionaries. I was so astounded, I forgot to charge her a fine.
My best example: This afternoon a college-aged girl came into the library. She was dressed in her best Brittany On Her Off Day blue-jeans and tight hoodie over pastel shirt ensemble, complete with extra makeup. She said she'd been in last week and was told that all of our dream-interpretation books were checked out and overdue. She wanted to know if they had been returned yet. I knew the answer even before I looked `em up on the OPAC. Sure enough, still very much out and very much overdue.
"We do have a couple in our reference room," I offered.
"No. Yew can't check them out," she said. She left, disappointed.
Having missing or otherwise checked out dream dictionaries is nothing strange. They're harder to keep on the shelf than The Da Vinci Code. The patrons who want them never EVER want to simply look up stuff in our reference books on the subject. No, they want a book, or better still BOOKS, they can haul away and pour over for months on end. And they ALWAYS keep them for months on end. After all, it's not like they're going to stop dreaming! There's always a new dream coming down the ol' brain pipe that will require intensive interpretation and consarnit they'd better have a book, or better still BOOKS, on hand to make with the interpretin'. You practically have to have a court order and a crowbar to pry them out of their sweaty little hands. Well, almost always...
Fifteen minutes after the first girl left, a second girl came in and returned ALL of our dream dictionaries. I was so astounded, I forgot to charge her a fine.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Fear me, children!
Mrs. C called me yesterday morning saying she had a big favor
to ask. My first thought was that she was not going to be at work that
day and it would be a solo Monday for the Juicemeister. However, it
wasn't anything THAT scary.
Turns out Mrs. C has a case of shingles and was therefore contageous to people who haven't had chicken pox yet. To make matters worse, we had a kindergarten class visit scheduled for 1:15 and she didn't think it was a good idea that she give the tour. Could I do it?
"Sure. No problem" I said.
I'd never done a class visit before, though. I'd seen them done, but mostly from the other side of the circulation desk where my job was to wave at the kiddies when Mrs. C tells to return their books there and not put them on the book cart, which was only for our use. I didn't figure doing a tour would be a problem, though. I used to give class tours all the time when I worked at Pizza Hut back in college. At least at the "liberry" I wouldn't have to worry about keeping kids from sticking their arms in the oven.
Mrs. C assured me she would write up a list of all the things I needed to tell them.
"Or I could just make stuff up and they'd never know the difference," I said. "Whadda they know? They're in kindergarten!"
"True."
I rolled in to work at 1 and found a small stack of pages awaiting me for things I needed to convey. It was all standard stuff, but phrased in such a way as to connect to the mind of a Kindergartener. The kids didn't give me much time to crib, though, for they arrived ten minutes early. Mrs. C dashed out the back door just as the kids came pouring in and suddenly I was staring at a room full of five year olds looking up at me expectantly.
As easy as I thought explaining the library would be, I kept running into problems, even with Mrs. C's instructions to fall back on. See, I'm used to explaining how the library works to new patrons, but most of the time they at least have a knowledge base of how libraries typically work to build on. These kids were blank slates. So every time I told them anything I immediately realized I had to back track and explain base concepts. I also had to watch my wording. For instance, at one point I was explaining that we put "PB" on the spine-labels (book addresses) of all paperback books but not on the hard back books. I told them "that's how we differentiate between the two." Then I remembered that many of our ADULT patrons would scratch their heads at "differentiate" so I had to start over.
Fortunately, their teacher had been through the drill many more times than me. She helped me out whenever I would try to move on to the next room without explaining everything first--like, don't shove all the books back on the shelf and don't try to reshelve the books yourself and you can use your inside voice in this room, but whisper everywhere else. The kids seemed to pick up on a lot of it, though. And they were all quiet and well-behaved.
I was suprised how nervous I was about it. And I don't even know why. I mean, they're kindergarteners. What better audience could you wish for? You can get laughs with the lamest jokes with them. For instance, while schooling them on how much we charge for fines, I pointed out that we only make you pay for the books themselves if you lose them or if your dog decides to eat them. They would have to pay us for the book and then get their dog to pay them back. They liked that one.
While giving them the tour of the upstairs non-fiction section, I was explaining how they really needed to be quiet up there because that's where our tables are and sometimes people study there. "Like this guy," I said, pointing to one of our patrons who I know is a first year student at my wife's school. He was studying with earphones on, listening to boring lectures, no doubt. He looked up when I pointed to him and then waved to the kids. They stayed quiet.
Fortunately, the teacher is one of the good class-visit teachers who does call ahead a couple weeks ahead and sends over all the contact information for us to make library cards for all the kids. We'd already done all that and had even made photocopies of the backs of the cards so we could scan them from the paper without having to give out the cards and create confusion and chaos. (Let "teach" deal with that back at school, we say.) Each kid was allowed to pick out one book. I think the teacher wanted them to pick out a kids fiction book from downstairs, but a few of the boys had heard me mention race-cars and dinosaurs upstairs, so that's what they wanted. I went up and grabbed a selection and brought them down to pass out.
Over all, it went pretty well, but after they were gone, I kept remembering all sorts of things I should have told them. Then again, they'll probably forget half of what I told them anyway. Whadda they know? They're in kindergarten.
Turns out Mrs. C has a case of shingles and was therefore contageous to people who haven't had chicken pox yet. To make matters worse, we had a kindergarten class visit scheduled for 1:15 and she didn't think it was a good idea that she give the tour. Could I do it?
"Sure. No problem" I said.
I'd never done a class visit before, though. I'd seen them done, but mostly from the other side of the circulation desk where my job was to wave at the kiddies when Mrs. C tells to return their books there and not put them on the book cart, which was only for our use. I didn't figure doing a tour would be a problem, though. I used to give class tours all the time when I worked at Pizza Hut back in college. At least at the "liberry" I wouldn't have to worry about keeping kids from sticking their arms in the oven.
Mrs. C assured me she would write up a list of all the things I needed to tell them.
"Or I could just make stuff up and they'd never know the difference," I said. "Whadda they know? They're in kindergarten!"
"True."
I rolled in to work at 1 and found a small stack of pages awaiting me for things I needed to convey. It was all standard stuff, but phrased in such a way as to connect to the mind of a Kindergartener. The kids didn't give me much time to crib, though, for they arrived ten minutes early. Mrs. C dashed out the back door just as the kids came pouring in and suddenly I was staring at a room full of five year olds looking up at me expectantly.
As easy as I thought explaining the library would be, I kept running into problems, even with Mrs. C's instructions to fall back on. See, I'm used to explaining how the library works to new patrons, but most of the time they at least have a knowledge base of how libraries typically work to build on. These kids were blank slates. So every time I told them anything I immediately realized I had to back track and explain base concepts. I also had to watch my wording. For instance, at one point I was explaining that we put "PB" on the spine-labels (book addresses) of all paperback books but not on the hard back books. I told them "that's how we differentiate between the two." Then I remembered that many of our ADULT patrons would scratch their heads at "differentiate" so I had to start over.
Fortunately, their teacher had been through the drill many more times than me. She helped me out whenever I would try to move on to the next room without explaining everything first--like, don't shove all the books back on the shelf and don't try to reshelve the books yourself and you can use your inside voice in this room, but whisper everywhere else. The kids seemed to pick up on a lot of it, though. And they were all quiet and well-behaved.
I was suprised how nervous I was about it. And I don't even know why. I mean, they're kindergarteners. What better audience could you wish for? You can get laughs with the lamest jokes with them. For instance, while schooling them on how much we charge for fines, I pointed out that we only make you pay for the books themselves if you lose them or if your dog decides to eat them. They would have to pay us for the book and then get their dog to pay them back. They liked that one.
While giving them the tour of the upstairs non-fiction section, I was explaining how they really needed to be quiet up there because that's where our tables are and sometimes people study there. "Like this guy," I said, pointing to one of our patrons who I know is a first year student at my wife's school. He was studying with earphones on, listening to boring lectures, no doubt. He looked up when I pointed to him and then waved to the kids. They stayed quiet.
Fortunately, the teacher is one of the good class-visit teachers who does call ahead a couple weeks ahead and sends over all the contact information for us to make library cards for all the kids. We'd already done all that and had even made photocopies of the backs of the cards so we could scan them from the paper without having to give out the cards and create confusion and chaos. (Let "teach" deal with that back at school, we say.) Each kid was allowed to pick out one book. I think the teacher wanted them to pick out a kids fiction book from downstairs, but a few of the boys had heard me mention race-cars and dinosaurs upstairs, so that's what they wanted. I went up and grabbed a selection and brought them down to pass out.
Over all, it went pretty well, but after they were gone, I kept remembering all sorts of things I should have told them. Then again, they'll probably forget half of what I told them anyway. Whadda they know? They're in kindergarten.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #23
SETTING: My "liberry," some weeks back.
ME: Hi, can I help you?
FEMALE PATRON: Yeah. I was looking for a book called the Da Vinci Code? (She says this in a tone which suggests I might somehow never have heard of it.)
ME: (Affects sudden intake of air) Welllllllll, that may be a hard one to find on the shelf.
PATRON: Really?
ME: Oh, yeah. See, while we own five copies of the Da Vinci Code, they're perpetually on hold. In fact, they've been on hold for nearly two years now. And whenever one does hit the shelf, it's gone almost instantly. I've never seen anything like it before.
PATRON: Wow. Somebody just recently told me to read it. They said it was really good.
ME: Well... it's popular.
PATRON: So when's one due back in?
ME: (Looks it up in the computer. Four copies are checked out, one is horrendously overdue and likely never to be seen again, one is checked in but is actually in the hold bin awaiting pickup, only three people seem to be actively on hold for the next available copy.) Looks like next week, but three people are on hold. Would you like me to put you on hold too?
PATRON: No. I think I'll just check back with you next week.
ME: Um... That's not going to work for this book.
PATRON: That's all right. I'll just check back next week.
ME: No, really, ma'am. I'm serious. It won't work. Any other book we have, sure, but not this one. I swear you'll get it faster if I just put you on hold for it.
PATRON: (Still very cheerfully) No, that's okay. I'll just check back next week.
(This patron has YET to see this book.)
ME: Hi, can I help you?
FEMALE PATRON: Yeah. I was looking for a book called the Da Vinci Code? (She says this in a tone which suggests I might somehow never have heard of it.)
ME: (Affects sudden intake of air) Welllllllll, that may be a hard one to find on the shelf.
PATRON: Really?
ME: Oh, yeah. See, while we own five copies of the Da Vinci Code, they're perpetually on hold. In fact, they've been on hold for nearly two years now. And whenever one does hit the shelf, it's gone almost instantly. I've never seen anything like it before.
PATRON: Wow. Somebody just recently told me to read it. They said it was really good.
ME: Well... it's popular.
PATRON: So when's one due back in?
ME: (Looks it up in the computer. Four copies are checked out, one is horrendously overdue and likely never to be seen again, one is checked in but is actually in the hold bin awaiting pickup, only three people seem to be actively on hold for the next available copy.) Looks like next week, but three people are on hold. Would you like me to put you on hold too?
PATRON: No. I think I'll just check back with you next week.
ME: Um... That's not going to work for this book.
PATRON: That's all right. I'll just check back next week.
ME: No, really, ma'am. I'm serious. It won't work. Any other book we have, sure, but not this one. I swear you'll get it faster if I just put you on hold for it.
PATRON: (Still very cheerfully) No, that's okay. I'll just check back next week.
(This patron has YET to see this book.)
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
The Unanticipated and Disappointing Early Return of "Sir Richard Weed"
I wasn't expecting a resolution to the situation with Paranoid Rick James so soon, but it happened and has settled out with no major fireworks. Rats.
I didn't even find out about it until nearly closing time yesterday, when I asked Mrs. C what she and Mrs. A were planning to do about Rick's returned overdue notice.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you... He returned his late tapes on Friday," Mrs. C said with a grin.
"Did he now?" I said, warming to what I hoped was a story of Rick James getting royally blessed out by a double-barrell Mrs. A/Mrs. C combo. I wanted to hear all the details of how they raked him across coals for knowingly omitting the fact that the address he'd given us was no longer valid. It wasn't quite so good as all that, but it's still a nice story.
According to Mrs. C, Paranoid Rick James ambled in by himself Friday afternoon and turned in his overdue books on tape. I'd certainly not expected him to return so soon, but it makes sense as he'd choose to do so on Friday and Rick, cheap jerk that he is, knew we don't charge fines on Friday. Otherwise his would have been in the $7.50 range. Well, they would have if we didn't have that darn $4 fine ceiling.
So Rick drops off his old tapes and heads on back to find new ones. Once he'd selected some, he came back to the desk to check out, where Mrs. C was lying in wait for him.
Can you guess what necessary item for checking things out Paranoid Rick James "neglected" to bring with him? That's right, surprise surprise: his "liberry" card!
"Oh," he said in what Mrs. C reports was a disdainful tone, "I have to have my library card, don't I?"
"Yes, you do," she said. "You also have to provide us with a valid mailing address and a physical address before you can check anything else out. We sent you an overdue notice about your books on tape and it came back to us as having an invalid address."
Rick protested claiming, "Well I told them when I got the card that it was my old address!"
Naturally, I was fuming when Mrs. C related this bit.
"NO. HE. DID. NOT!" I all but shouted. Then I realized I was shouting at the choir, for Mrs. C has heard more than one re-telling on my part of That time I issued Paranoid Rick James a card and she was well-aware that he had said no such thing. And even if she hadn't, it was utter crap that he would even make such an assertion because we're certainly not in the business of handing out library cards to people without valid mailing addresses. That was the ENTIRE POINT of the argument when he first tried to get a card with us, so there's no way we would have accepted a bogus address a week later, even if he had pointed it out, (WHICH. HE. DID. NOT!).
Mrs. C said she listened to him, then told him once again that he would be checking no items out until he provided us with the valid required addresses, not to mention his actual card. Rick wisely decided not to push the issue. He left his pile of books on tape there and said he'd pick them up later. Mrs. C then went up to tell Mrs. A who had been in. They were both laying money that Rick would turn up again, but with Gladys Knight's card just to try and "get one over" on us yet again. However, when Rick came back a few hours later, he had his own card and provided us with a valid mailing address--Gladys's, which is technically his too, since he does live there.
Here's hoping he stays away for another three months.
I didn't even find out about it until nearly closing time yesterday, when I asked Mrs. C what she and Mrs. A were planning to do about Rick's returned overdue notice.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you... He returned his late tapes on Friday," Mrs. C said with a grin.
"Did he now?" I said, warming to what I hoped was a story of Rick James getting royally blessed out by a double-barrell Mrs. A/Mrs. C combo. I wanted to hear all the details of how they raked him across coals for knowingly omitting the fact that the address he'd given us was no longer valid. It wasn't quite so good as all that, but it's still a nice story.
According to Mrs. C, Paranoid Rick James ambled in by himself Friday afternoon and turned in his overdue books on tape. I'd certainly not expected him to return so soon, but it makes sense as he'd choose to do so on Friday and Rick, cheap jerk that he is, knew we don't charge fines on Friday. Otherwise his would have been in the $7.50 range. Well, they would have if we didn't have that darn $4 fine ceiling.
So Rick drops off his old tapes and heads on back to find new ones. Once he'd selected some, he came back to the desk to check out, where Mrs. C was lying in wait for him.
Can you guess what necessary item for checking things out Paranoid Rick James "neglected" to bring with him? That's right, surprise surprise: his "liberry" card!
"Oh," he said in what Mrs. C reports was a disdainful tone, "I have to have my library card, don't I?"
"Yes, you do," she said. "You also have to provide us with a valid mailing address and a physical address before you can check anything else out. We sent you an overdue notice about your books on tape and it came back to us as having an invalid address."
Rick protested claiming, "Well I told them when I got the card that it was my old address!"
Naturally, I was fuming when Mrs. C related this bit.
"NO. HE. DID. NOT!" I all but shouted. Then I realized I was shouting at the choir, for Mrs. C has heard more than one re-telling on my part of That time I issued Paranoid Rick James a card and she was well-aware that he had said no such thing. And even if she hadn't, it was utter crap that he would even make such an assertion because we're certainly not in the business of handing out library cards to people without valid mailing addresses. That was the ENTIRE POINT of the argument when he first tried to get a card with us, so there's no way we would have accepted a bogus address a week later, even if he had pointed it out, (WHICH. HE. DID. NOT!).
Mrs. C said she listened to him, then told him once again that he would be checking no items out until he provided us with the valid required addresses, not to mention his actual card. Rick wisely decided not to push the issue. He left his pile of books on tape there and said he'd pick them up later. Mrs. C then went up to tell Mrs. A who had been in. They were both laying money that Rick would turn up again, but with Gladys Knight's card just to try and "get one over" on us yet again. However, when Rick came back a few hours later, he had his own card and provided us with a valid mailing address--Gladys's, which is technically his too, since he does live there.
Here's hoping he stays away for another three months.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Juice's Not Quite So Butt-Hard Music Trivia
As I walked in the door last Thursday, Mrs. A, Mrs. C and our
friendly neighborhood high-school aged
unofficial-library-volunteer-staff-member, Rif, were standing around
behind the desk. As soon as they caught sight of me, they said, "Well
try it out on JUICE. I bet he'll know."
"Huh?" I said, walking up.
Mrs. A was holding the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the second special issue in their Top 100 Greatest Rock Musicians of All Time As Determined by 50 Cent and Quentin Tarantino series. On the cover was a grid of mug-shots of famous musicians, some of whom the library staff and would-be staff were having difficulty identifying. I took one look at it and said, "James Taylor, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Jerry Garcia, Eminem, Joni Mitchel, Frank Zappa, 2pac, Elvis Costello and Axel Rose." The only one that gave me pause was James Taylor, but only because it was a very old photo from back when he had hair and a really poor goatee. Those eyes, though, were unmistakable.
Of course, my fellow employees and Rif were astounded at my knowledge of musicians.
"How did you know all of them?" Rif asked.
"Well, I worked seven years in radio, for one thing," I said. However, I didn't want to tell them that even if I hadn't worked 7 years in radio and wasn't a repository for useless information of all kinds, those were not even a challenge for MOST people with even a passing knowledge of popular music over the past 30 years. Rif I excuse cause he's only 17 and recently admitted to having never heard a song by Prince. And Mrs. J I can excuse, cause I'm not sure she'd even acknowledge there are other genres of music beyond country. But it seems like everyone else should have known more of these. They weren't even curveball artists, like if they'd put Jello Biafra or even Nick Drake on the cover. These were mostly top-40 artists, with the exception of Jerry Garcia and maybe Frank Zappa. Even "Valley Girl" did pretty well for him, though. And, man, everyone knows Jerry Bear!
"Huh?" I said, walking up.
Mrs. A was holding the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the second special issue in their Top 100 Greatest Rock Musicians of All Time As Determined by 50 Cent and Quentin Tarantino series. On the cover was a grid of mug-shots of famous musicians, some of whom the library staff and would-be staff were having difficulty identifying. I took one look at it and said, "James Taylor, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Jerry Garcia, Eminem, Joni Mitchel, Frank Zappa, 2pac, Elvis Costello and Axel Rose." The only one that gave me pause was James Taylor, but only because it was a very old photo from back when he had hair and a really poor goatee. Those eyes, though, were unmistakable.
Of course, my fellow employees and Rif were astounded at my knowledge of musicians.
"How did you know all of them?" Rif asked.
"Well, I worked seven years in radio, for one thing," I said. However, I didn't want to tell them that even if I hadn't worked 7 years in radio and wasn't a repository for useless information of all kinds, those were not even a challenge for MOST people with even a passing knowledge of popular music over the past 30 years. Rif I excuse cause he's only 17 and recently admitted to having never heard a song by Prince. And Mrs. J I can excuse, cause I'm not sure she'd even acknowledge there are other genres of music beyond country. But it seems like everyone else should have known more of these. They weren't even curveball artists, like if they'd put Jello Biafra or even Nick Drake on the cover. These were mostly top-40 artists, with the exception of Jerry Garcia and maybe Frank Zappa. Even "Valley Girl" did pretty well for him, though. And, man, everyone knows Jerry Bear!
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Maybe I should rename him "Sir Richard Weed"?
Since coming back from Central America, I've been wondering if I've
stepped into the Twilight Zone or something. We've had very few Rogues Gallery
sightings in the past two weeks. Even Parka, who's almost a daily
presence, hasn't been in much at all. Other than Mr. B-Natural putting
in a well-behaved appearance, there's not been much to write home about.
Then I arrived at work this morning and saw that by the computer was one of our overdue notices, returned to us by the Post Office due to an insufficient address. It was addressed to Paranoid Rick James.
That's right, the same high-strung little butt-salad-sandwich who, a few months back, raised 8 kinds of hell that we not only required a drivers license but also (GASP!) a physical address in order to get a library card. Yes, the same guy who, after having made such an enormous scene in front of nearly every other staff member BUT me, plus refusing to supply said information to get a card, then came back a week later when I was the only one on shift and gladly seemed to supply it. See he was operating under the mistaken premise that because I had not witnessed his first tantrum I wouldn't have heard about it. He'd even been happy to show me his driver's license and provide the physical address, and since I could find nothing wrong with it I let him have a library card anyway.
"Did you see this?" I asked holding it up for Mrs. C. She nodded and rolled her eyes. Mrs. A too just shook her head in mute fury.
It's not that I was surprised that Rick's overdue noticed was returned to us. I knew something was fishy with his address back in July simply because he was too happy to supply it. What I was surprised about, however, was that he'd actually checked anything out using the card at all. He usually prefers doing all his checkouts using his girlfriend Gladys Knight's card. Apparently he was caught in the library one day without her tagging along and was forced to dig his out.
How he hornswaggled us is very simple and I'm pissed that I didn't do the math until now. When he threw his original fit, it was because we wouldn't just accept his post office box as his address and required him to put down a physical address too. We only require this in the case of post office boxes. When he came back a week later and supplied an address, it was the non-post office box address on his drivers license. My thought is, while the license was current (I did check that much), he had probably since moved from the address listed on it so he didn't feel any qualms about supplying it.
We're still in discussions as to what to ultimately do about Rick. First and foremost, we've blocked his patron account from checking out anything further until he supplies a physical address and proper mailing address. Unfortunately, I doubt he'll bat an eye at that. In fact, he'll probably view it as proof that we're conspiring to get his physical address (and we are!) or he'll view it as some kind of great victory over us, refuse to supply the address and just never check anything out from us using his card again. He'll probably keep coming in with Gladys Knight, though, just to rub our noses in the fact that he's still getting his books on tape through her. Not a lot we can do about that.
We've discussed sending his overdue through Gladys Knight's address, which we assume is correct. They live together so it would piss him off good if we reached him that way. Me, I'm for just phoning him up, assuming the phone number he provided works, and telling him off. Or better yet, getting his physical address through other means and sending the sheriff after him like we told him we would.
Suggestions?
Then I arrived at work this morning and saw that by the computer was one of our overdue notices, returned to us by the Post Office due to an insufficient address. It was addressed to Paranoid Rick James.
That's right, the same high-strung little butt-salad-sandwich who, a few months back, raised 8 kinds of hell that we not only required a drivers license but also (GASP!) a physical address in order to get a library card. Yes, the same guy who, after having made such an enormous scene in front of nearly every other staff member BUT me, plus refusing to supply said information to get a card, then came back a week later when I was the only one on shift and gladly seemed to supply it. See he was operating under the mistaken premise that because I had not witnessed his first tantrum I wouldn't have heard about it. He'd even been happy to show me his driver's license and provide the physical address, and since I could find nothing wrong with it I let him have a library card anyway.
"Did you see this?" I asked holding it up for Mrs. C. She nodded and rolled her eyes. Mrs. A too just shook her head in mute fury.
It's not that I was surprised that Rick's overdue noticed was returned to us. I knew something was fishy with his address back in July simply because he was too happy to supply it. What I was surprised about, however, was that he'd actually checked anything out using the card at all. He usually prefers doing all his checkouts using his girlfriend Gladys Knight's card. Apparently he was caught in the library one day without her tagging along and was forced to dig his out.
How he hornswaggled us is very simple and I'm pissed that I didn't do the math until now. When he threw his original fit, it was because we wouldn't just accept his post office box as his address and required him to put down a physical address too. We only require this in the case of post office boxes. When he came back a week later and supplied an address, it was the non-post office box address on his drivers license. My thought is, while the license was current (I did check that much), he had probably since moved from the address listed on it so he didn't feel any qualms about supplying it.
We're still in discussions as to what to ultimately do about Rick. First and foremost, we've blocked his patron account from checking out anything further until he supplies a physical address and proper mailing address. Unfortunately, I doubt he'll bat an eye at that. In fact, he'll probably view it as proof that we're conspiring to get his physical address (and we are!) or he'll view it as some kind of great victory over us, refuse to supply the address and just never check anything out from us using his card again. He'll probably keep coming in with Gladys Knight, though, just to rub our noses in the fact that he's still getting his books on tape through her. Not a lot we can do about that.
We've discussed sending his overdue through Gladys Knight's address, which we assume is correct. They live together so it would piss him off good if we reached him that way. Me, I'm for just phoning him up, assuming the phone number he provided works, and telling him off. Or better yet, getting his physical address through other means and sending the sheriff after him like we told him we would.
Suggestions?
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