A mom, dad and little kid came in, yesterday, put their books and assorted media returns on the circ desk and headed for the children's room to browse for more. Atop the stack of books was one of the Dad's returns, a DVD of The Rock's cinematic magnum opus, The Sc0rpi0n King. When I picked up the case, though, there was a curious rattling sound from within, unlike most DVD cases in which the user has properly seated the DVD upon its knobby little spindle. I opened the case to check and noticed immediately that while the DVD for The Sc0rpi0n King was actually seated properly, the DVD resting on top of it, entitled "DP My Pussy," was not. Yesirree, that's four hours of good, old-fashioned, European, double-penetration porn for your ass. Or, rather your... well, you know.
"Oh, my," I said, just as my coworker, Mrs. B, stepped behind the desk. I showed her my find. She tittered.
"Where did you...?"
"In here," I said, holding up the DVD case, the Rock's face grimacing from the cover. I nodded in the direction of the Dad, who could be seen, his back turned, just beyond the door to the children's room.
"What do we do?" Mrs. B said, still laughing.
"I have no idea," I said, barely containing my own fit of chuckles. Then the Dad stepped back into the main room and Mrs. B scattered, trying to regain composure. I continued to check in their other books, forcing my mouth into a frown to counteract the powerful forces working to make it grin. I debated what to do next.
First on my agenda was to unobtrusively slip over to the copier and photocopy the DVD's face, just so I could be sure to get my facts right when reporting it here later. This I did. The DVD appeared to be from a mailorder outfit similar to Netflix, only for porn. Next, the phone rang. It was for my boss, Mrs. A. So I left the circ desk, passed the Dad, passed the Mom & the Kid in the children's room, and went upstairs to tell Mrs. A she had a call.
"We just had a patron bring back some porn in the Sc0rpi0n King box," I whispered across the desk to her.
"Do you know who did it?"
"Yeah," I said. "He's still here. With his whole family."
Mrs. A cackled.
"I don't know what to do," I said.
"Give it back to him."
"You're serious?"
"Sure. Just tell him you found a DVD that wasn't ours in the case and you wanted to give it back."
I shook my head. "Yeah. This should be fun."
I returned to the circ desk. Within minutes, the Dad, the Mom & the Kid approached, books and "liberry" card in hand.
Now, here's where I may have made an error...
You know how every once in a while you'll hear a story in the news about some poor moron of a restaurant manager who fires an employee yet expects that freshly terminated employee to go ahead and finish out his shift? And, of course, by the end of the evening they find half a standy turd in the mole sauce and 50 cases of E. coli on their hands? Well, I kind of did the library equivalent. Instead of checking all their books out to them first and THEN passing over the porn, I served it up as my opening move.
"Um, we found... another... DVD in the Sc0rpi0n King box," I said. I slid the DVD face down across the desk. The Dad picked it up, took a one half second glance at its face and quickly pocketed it without even a mumbled "thanks." Only then, discomfort quite thick in the air, no eye-contact being made by ANYBODY, did I begin to check their books out to them.
*beep*
(stamp)
*beep*
(stamp)
*beep*(stamp)
(find where we hid the barcode on this one)
*beep*
(stamp)
*beep*(stamp)
...through the first ten of the books they'd brought up.
"Uh, we've run out of room on this card," I said, eyes still averted, holding out the eleventh book, as yet unscanned.
"That's... that's okay," the Dad said in a low voice. He gathered up the pile of books in one hand, the Kid in the other and they quickly made for the door. I then flew to the window to see where they went, because I wanted a glimpse of how the scene was gonna play out once Mom & Dad hit the car. I could just imagine the verbal beating the Dad would receive for not only putting four hours of double penetration porn in the Sc0rpi0n King case, but returning it to the library to boot! How does one even DO that unintentionally? Of course, maybe it was her fault. Maybe they were in a big hurry to get out of the house and she was trying to gather all of Junior's things together, saw the partially open Sc0rpi0n King case on top of the TV, ejected whatever was in the DVD player and slapped it in there without looking. Maybe. Whatever the cause, I couldn't see any animation from them in the car that indicated an argument. Maybe that would have to wait until later, after they put Junior down for his nap.
I'm thinking we may never see them or the books they borrowed again.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Friday, September 01, 2006
Stinking Innanet Crowd!
I'm so disappointed in our computer patrons. Now that Crusty Dave has provided us with a genuine threat to temperament, nose and the holding down of lunch, none of our regular innanet crowders seem willing to help us get rid of him.
See Crusty has proven himself perfectly willing to stay on our computers all day long, and, provided no one is in need of his computer due to the other two computers being taken up by patrons, he can actually get away with it. In order to bust him off, we need at least three other people who want computers at the same time. The trouble is, Crusty Dave is very very stinky. It's not quite the slap-you-in-the-face-with-a-dead-fish stench of Mr. Stanky, but it's ultimately a more pervasive stench because it has so much time to build up. Once any other computer user gets around him, they find their desire to stay there quickly diminishes and rarely stay for their full half hour. So for most of the day, there was at least one and often two computers open.
At one point, Crusty had some competition from Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, a relatively recent addition to our benign irritants gallery whose major claim to infame is his tendency to tell anyone who gets too close to him the mind-numbingly boring details of his geneal0gy research. (We make it a point never to engage him in conversation of any kind because he forcefully steers it back around to his favorite topic every single time.)
Gene got his computer a couple hours after Dave's first sign-in and I was glad to have him, because Gene can hog up the computer time better than most and has the added bonus of not stinking. Soon, another patron took the last computer and before long a kid came in and signed up for Crusty's. I let Crusty know he needed to get off, but by the time he actually got around to getting off the kid had left the building and I didn't technically have anyone waiting. I kept that bit of information to myself, though, and Crusty departed.
I had barely had time to clean up his crust and spritz down his chair with Febreeze when he returned and signed up again. By then, unfortunately, the other computer patron had also departed, leaving only Gene. And by the time I had another computer-competition-trifecta, I then had to bust Gene off.
Gene, while signing out, said something about possibly coming back later. I tried to get him to go ahead and sign up for another session right then. I was even willing to stand there and engage him in geneal0gy talk until his turn came up, but he decided he would go away for a bit first.
So for the rest of my workday, Crusty and his intense stench held sway over the computer hall and indeed the landing above it. I spent the day cursing the usual innanet crowders for being so disloyal to us and Crusty for officially ruining Febreeze's Linen & Sky scent.
Where the hell are our tried and true faithful? Why aren't they flocking to us in great numbers? (For it is only in great numbers that we will be able to stave off the evil!) I'll take nearly any of them, really, provided they're not stinky. Where is the Devil Twin Auxiliary League? Or the Devil Twins themselves?! I'd be willing to cut them some slack on fines if they'd just monopolize a couple of computers for a few hours for me. Where is Mr. B-Natural? Or Crazed Mom? Or Mr. Big Stupid? Or Kanji the Kid? Or The Dufus? Where are they? I'll take Mrs. Bellows or the Internet Neophyte, too, and will even show them how to load "the innanet."
God help me, I'll even take Parka's dumb ass back.
There! I said it! I said his name, have given him power and summoned him from the depths of whatever Stygian pit he's been trolling around for the past few blissful, Parka-Free months! Bring it on!!!
Friday, August 04, 2006
Dear David McPhail...
...you big, honking, prolific, Massachusetts-livin', fanny-deposit.
Why ya gotta write so many frickin' kids books, huh?
Sure, they're good and all, but they're a pain in my keister to have to alphabetize along with the rest of the Ms in our Easy Reader section.
Okay, so it's our fault that we kept that section pretty wild and chaotic for nigh unto two decades, allowing it to flourish unhindered by the toils of alphabetic classification except for the scantest trace of the first letter of the author's last name. And in that time it became a near-mystical land where patrons had little hope of locating specific books without a Sherpa, a bagpipe player and perhaps a tube of KY. Why exactly my boss got a wild hair up her hinder to bring order to this land, after all these years, I'm not entirely sure. In my view, the land became so wild and disorganized due entirely to the evil children who frequent it and their grabby, shovy, occasionally poop-encrusted little hands. In fact, while I was busy alphabetizing your particular acre of shelf-space, one such whelp came over, yanked out a book from a recently alphabetized section and immediately proceeded to cram it back in a random part of the shelf for no observable reason other than an inherent need to sew discord. I very nearly slapped her. It is furthermore my prediction that these same stinking crumb-crunchers will soon return the Easy Readers section to its previous anarchic state despite any and all efforts on our part to civilize the joint.
However, you, David McPhail, aren't helping matters! Out of the entire section of authors whose surnames begin with Mc-, yours was easily the most represented of any single author. You even beat out Robert McCloskey by a healthy margin. So while I appreciate the quality, care and attention to detail you bring to your work, you're doing too durn much of it and it's cheesing me off! Do you realize the hours of manpower it's going to take to keep your books in any kind of order? Dear God, man, just reading your shelf alone will be enough to drive a person mad! How can you live with yourself? You inhuman monster!
In your favor, though, at least the covers of your wonderful books don't include a goofy, little, Culkin-esque picture of yourself gawking out at readers from beneath one of the world's worst comb-overs. (Yeah, I'm talkin' about you Robert Munsch!)
Yours sincerely,
--da juicemeister
Why ya gotta write so many frickin' kids books, huh?
Sure, they're good and all, but they're a pain in my keister to have to alphabetize along with the rest of the Ms in our Easy Reader section.
Okay, so it's our fault that we kept that section pretty wild and chaotic for nigh unto two decades, allowing it to flourish unhindered by the toils of alphabetic classification except for the scantest trace of the first letter of the author's last name. And in that time it became a near-mystical land where patrons had little hope of locating specific books without a Sherpa, a bagpipe player and perhaps a tube of KY. Why exactly my boss got a wild hair up her hinder to bring order to this land, after all these years, I'm not entirely sure. In my view, the land became so wild and disorganized due entirely to the evil children who frequent it and their grabby, shovy, occasionally poop-encrusted little hands. In fact, while I was busy alphabetizing your particular acre of shelf-space, one such whelp came over, yanked out a book from a recently alphabetized section and immediately proceeded to cram it back in a random part of the shelf for no observable reason other than an inherent need to sew discord. I very nearly slapped her. It is furthermore my prediction that these same stinking crumb-crunchers will soon return the Easy Readers section to its previous anarchic state despite any and all efforts on our part to civilize the joint.
However, you, David McPhail, aren't helping matters! Out of the entire section of authors whose surnames begin with Mc-, yours was easily the most represented of any single author. You even beat out Robert McCloskey by a healthy margin. So while I appreciate the quality, care and attention to detail you bring to your work, you're doing too durn much of it and it's cheesing me off! Do you realize the hours of manpower it's going to take to keep your books in any kind of order? Dear God, man, just reading your shelf alone will be enough to drive a person mad! How can you live with yourself? You inhuman monster!
In your favor, though, at least the covers of your wonderful books don't include a goofy, little, Culkin-esque picture of yourself gawking out at readers from beneath one of the world's worst comb-overs. (Yeah, I'm talkin' about you Robert Munsch!)
Yours sincerely,
--da juicemeister
Friday, July 21, 2006
Kayla + Summa Reading + Mom & Sis / Aggressive Ignorance = Crazed Staff
It's our penultimate week of Summa Reading `06, but already we're clawing our way toward the end with anticipation. Once again, our demonic little friend Kayla is in attendance. (See episodes: 1, 2, 3, 4.) Oddly, though, our troubles this year aren't due to little Kayla.
Mrs. C and Mrs. B began complaining a week ago that while Kayla was surprisingly well-behaved in Summa Reading, her mom and little sister are driving them mad. Mom insists on accompanying Kayla to the Summa Reading sessions, not to mention dragging little sister along with her. Once in attendance, though, mom doesn't really do much other than lay around. Literally. Mrs. C said that during craft time last week, Kayla's mom stepped out into the center of the ring of craft-assembling children and lay down in the middle of the floor for a nap. Meanwhile, little sister was allowed to run amok through the activity room, terrorizing everyone by stomping on the Summa Reading kids' crafts, or even on the Summa Reading kids themselves when they thoughtlessly allowed their hands to stay within Sis's stomping range. Mom didn't even attempt her usual ineffective, "No, no, mommy said `stop that,' " leaving it to Mrs. C and Mrs B to keep Sis from destroying everything.
After last week, it was Mrs. C's stated intention that the next time Kayla and crew arrived (late as usual, no doubt) that she would take the mom aside and tell her that we think Kayla will do fine by herself and that she, the mom, is welcome to take Sis and wait downstairs. And this is precisely what Mrs.C did yesterday. According to Mrs. A, who watched safely from her office, Mrs. C took Kayla from her mother before they could even make it to the top of the stairs, ran off with her and closed the activity room door firmly behind her. Kayla's mom then stood on the stairs looking worriedly up at the closed door, as though she could hardly stand not being in there to aid in the chaos.
So for an hour, I got to watch Mom and Sis mill around the children's room picking out books. Little sis hasn't quite reached the level of destruction capable by her older sister, but I'm sure she's just working up to it.
When Summa Reading was over, Kayla picked out nearly her weight in board books which she marched up to the desk with, announcing she wanted to buy them. Her mom tried to explain that she already had several other books picked out and that they could only take what they had room for on both her library card and Kayla's. Before they could check them out, though, Mom said they needed to fetch all their returns from the car to check-in. I was afraid this would mean Mom was going to leave the little ones in our care while she fled to the car for a much needed break. Kayla had already been trying her best to pop all our inflatable animals in the kids room by violently attempting to ride them. ("No, Kayla, don't ride the animals. No, Kayla, mommy said don't ride the animals. Kayla? Are you listening, Kayla? Kayla?") Fortunately for us, mom took both kids to the car with her for the search.
After ten minutes of blissful silence, during which I pre-date-stamped their books for added speed to their departure and during which no animals were menaced nor any little sister voices raised in spine-rending wail, they returned with their check-ins, which I then checked in. Afterwards, I looked up at them expectantly only to find expectant looks from them already.
"Um, do you have your library cards?" I asked.
"No, I don't think so," Kayla's mom said. Expectant look, expectant look.
"I'm sorry, but you do need your library card in order to check books out."
"Oh, really?" Kayla's mom said without any of the usual conviction of people genuinely surprised at this news. "Well, let me see." She began leafing through her wallet, occasionally gesturing other patrons around her, as the line at the desk was backed up by this point. Meanwhile, little sis had discovered the two brooms we keep beside the front door and was walking around with them. I wasn't worried, at first, as it gave me a chance to make the joke, "Are you going to sweep up for us?" Then she dropped one of the brooms and began swinging the other one with a force that, had she been a baseball player, would have got her brought up on charges of `roiding. One such swing nearly took off her sister's head and another nearly took out the glass of our front door. Mom ignored her and continued to search her wallet, leaving Mrs. A to bravely run over and disarm the child.
"Maybe they're in the car," Mom said. She gathered up kids and went to the car, but came back far sooner than a lengthy search would have taken. Little sister was now wailing again.
"I don't have the cards," mom said.
"Well, I'm sorry, but we do require a library card to check out books."
"All right, then," Mom said, looking downcast and without a friend in the world. "I guess we'll just come back some other time." Pause, then eyes flash up, full of hope.
"Okay," I said.
Mom stood there at the desk for several more seconds, as though waiting for me to relent. Little did she know, I am relentless. Meanwhile Kayla had returned to the children's room to pop more animals so Mom went in seemingly to collect her. She told Kayla to stop jumping on the animals because they had to leave. Next, she added that they wouldn't be getting any library books because they didn't have their library cards. I expected Kayla to freak out and burst into loud tears at this. In fact, I think Mom was counting on that reaction too, hoping a tantrum incident would give us added incentive to let them check out anyway. However, Kayla didn't take the bait and went right on happily squashing our plastic elephant into the floor.
Instead of collecting Kayla and leaving as she'd just said they needed to do, Mom stepped back into the main room, stood in the middle of the main room's floor and held screaming little sis in her arms there for a full five minutes. There was no indication as to why, she just stood there and let the toddler scream herself silly. Wail, wail, wail, spine-clench, spine-clench, spine-clench. Occasionally, Mom would glance pittifully in the direction of the circ-desk, leading me to again reach the conclusion that Kayla's mom was intentionally inflicting her children on us so we'd relent just to get them all out of the building. It was extortion, and brilliantly played. However, I became all the more determined that my administration would not give in to terror. I stayed planted at the desk. There was no danger of us letting her check out sans card, but there was the possibility that someone on staff would take pity on Mom and let her use one of their cards to check out. Wouldn't be me, but I could sort of see Mrs. A possibly offering just to make the screaming stop.
After five minutes of screaming, Mom approached the desk again. I'd stepped away from the computer and was speaking to Mrs. A back at the window. Mrs. J was now nearest to the computer, so mom tried to deal exclusively with her in a very low voice. Unfortunately for Mom, Mrs. J is hard of hearing. After a couple of low-volume failed attempts, Kayla's mom finally explained at full-volume to Mrs. J that she wanted to check out the pile of books that was still on the desk, but that she'd forgotten their library cards. Hopeful look, hopeful look.
"Ma'am, we cannot check books out to you without a library card," I said, stepping over.
"But I have a library card," Mom said, pointing at the computer.
"No. We have to have the physical card."
"If you like, we can hold these for you until you come back," Mrs. A offered.
Mrs. B then came over to join the crowd behind the desk and asked if the little sister had a card yet. Mom looked hopeful at this, but then Mrs. B pointed out that they would only be able to 10 books on that card and not the full 20 she wanted, so Mom decided not to get any extra cards at all.
"We'll just come back on Saturday," Mom said.
"We're not holding those until Saturday," Mrs. A said. "I thought you meant you would come back later today."
Mom adopted a sad tone and said they lived too far away to make a second trip back.
"Okay, well, maybe you can find them next time," Mrs. A said. We then collectively dispersed from the desk, our business concluded with no further need for discussion, leaving Mom to look unhappy. After Kayla and family finally left, a good ten minutes later, Mrs. A said that she was worried that she'd offended Kayla's mom by saying we wouldn't hold the books for two days. (It really wouldn't have been an issue had there only been a couple of books, but our hold bin is packed to the gills right now and there isn't room for 20 extra books in there.)
"So what if she is mad?" I said. "What's she going to do? Not come back next week? Yeah, that'll show us."
Mrs. C and Mrs. B began complaining a week ago that while Kayla was surprisingly well-behaved in Summa Reading, her mom and little sister are driving them mad. Mom insists on accompanying Kayla to the Summa Reading sessions, not to mention dragging little sister along with her. Once in attendance, though, mom doesn't really do much other than lay around. Literally. Mrs. C said that during craft time last week, Kayla's mom stepped out into the center of the ring of craft-assembling children and lay down in the middle of the floor for a nap. Meanwhile, little sister was allowed to run amok through the activity room, terrorizing everyone by stomping on the Summa Reading kids' crafts, or even on the Summa Reading kids themselves when they thoughtlessly allowed their hands to stay within Sis's stomping range. Mom didn't even attempt her usual ineffective, "No, no, mommy said `stop that,' " leaving it to Mrs. C and Mrs B to keep Sis from destroying everything.
After last week, it was Mrs. C's stated intention that the next time Kayla and crew arrived (late as usual, no doubt) that she would take the mom aside and tell her that we think Kayla will do fine by herself and that she, the mom, is welcome to take Sis and wait downstairs. And this is precisely what Mrs.C did yesterday. According to Mrs. A, who watched safely from her office, Mrs. C took Kayla from her mother before they could even make it to the top of the stairs, ran off with her and closed the activity room door firmly behind her. Kayla's mom then stood on the stairs looking worriedly up at the closed door, as though she could hardly stand not being in there to aid in the chaos.
So for an hour, I got to watch Mom and Sis mill around the children's room picking out books. Little sis hasn't quite reached the level of destruction capable by her older sister, but I'm sure she's just working up to it.
When Summa Reading was over, Kayla picked out nearly her weight in board books which she marched up to the desk with, announcing she wanted to buy them. Her mom tried to explain that she already had several other books picked out and that they could only take what they had room for on both her library card and Kayla's. Before they could check them out, though, Mom said they needed to fetch all their returns from the car to check-in. I was afraid this would mean Mom was going to leave the little ones in our care while she fled to the car for a much needed break. Kayla had already been trying her best to pop all our inflatable animals in the kids room by violently attempting to ride them. ("No, Kayla, don't ride the animals. No, Kayla, mommy said don't ride the animals. Kayla? Are you listening, Kayla? Kayla?") Fortunately for us, mom took both kids to the car with her for the search.
After ten minutes of blissful silence, during which I pre-date-stamped their books for added speed to their departure and during which no animals were menaced nor any little sister voices raised in spine-rending wail, they returned with their check-ins, which I then checked in. Afterwards, I looked up at them expectantly only to find expectant looks from them already.
"Um, do you have your library cards?" I asked.
"No, I don't think so," Kayla's mom said. Expectant look, expectant look.
"I'm sorry, but you do need your library card in order to check books out."
"Oh, really?" Kayla's mom said without any of the usual conviction of people genuinely surprised at this news. "Well, let me see." She began leafing through her wallet, occasionally gesturing other patrons around her, as the line at the desk was backed up by this point. Meanwhile, little sis had discovered the two brooms we keep beside the front door and was walking around with them. I wasn't worried, at first, as it gave me a chance to make the joke, "Are you going to sweep up for us?" Then she dropped one of the brooms and began swinging the other one with a force that, had she been a baseball player, would have got her brought up on charges of `roiding. One such swing nearly took off her sister's head and another nearly took out the glass of our front door. Mom ignored her and continued to search her wallet, leaving Mrs. A to bravely run over and disarm the child.
"Maybe they're in the car," Mom said. She gathered up kids and went to the car, but came back far sooner than a lengthy search would have taken. Little sister was now wailing again.
"I don't have the cards," mom said.
"Well, I'm sorry, but we do require a library card to check out books."
"All right, then," Mom said, looking downcast and without a friend in the world. "I guess we'll just come back some other time." Pause, then eyes flash up, full of hope.
"Okay," I said.
Mom stood there at the desk for several more seconds, as though waiting for me to relent. Little did she know, I am relentless. Meanwhile Kayla had returned to the children's room to pop more animals so Mom went in seemingly to collect her. She told Kayla to stop jumping on the animals because they had to leave. Next, she added that they wouldn't be getting any library books because they didn't have their library cards. I expected Kayla to freak out and burst into loud tears at this. In fact, I think Mom was counting on that reaction too, hoping a tantrum incident would give us added incentive to let them check out anyway. However, Kayla didn't take the bait and went right on happily squashing our plastic elephant into the floor.
Instead of collecting Kayla and leaving as she'd just said they needed to do, Mom stepped back into the main room, stood in the middle of the main room's floor and held screaming little sis in her arms there for a full five minutes. There was no indication as to why, she just stood there and let the toddler scream herself silly. Wail, wail, wail, spine-clench, spine-clench, spine-clench. Occasionally, Mom would glance pittifully in the direction of the circ-desk, leading me to again reach the conclusion that Kayla's mom was intentionally inflicting her children on us so we'd relent just to get them all out of the building. It was extortion, and brilliantly played. However, I became all the more determined that my administration would not give in to terror. I stayed planted at the desk. There was no danger of us letting her check out sans card, but there was the possibility that someone on staff would take pity on Mom and let her use one of their cards to check out. Wouldn't be me, but I could sort of see Mrs. A possibly offering just to make the screaming stop.
After five minutes of screaming, Mom approached the desk again. I'd stepped away from the computer and was speaking to Mrs. A back at the window. Mrs. J was now nearest to the computer, so mom tried to deal exclusively with her in a very low voice. Unfortunately for Mom, Mrs. J is hard of hearing. After a couple of low-volume failed attempts, Kayla's mom finally explained at full-volume to Mrs. J that she wanted to check out the pile of books that was still on the desk, but that she'd forgotten their library cards. Hopeful look, hopeful look.
"Ma'am, we cannot check books out to you without a library card," I said, stepping over.
"But I have a library card," Mom said, pointing at the computer.
"No. We have to have the physical card."
"If you like, we can hold these for you until you come back," Mrs. A offered.
Mrs. B then came over to join the crowd behind the desk and asked if the little sister had a card yet. Mom looked hopeful at this, but then Mrs. B pointed out that they would only be able to 10 books on that card and not the full 20 she wanted, so Mom decided not to get any extra cards at all.
"We'll just come back on Saturday," Mom said.
"We're not holding those until Saturday," Mrs. A said. "I thought you meant you would come back later today."
Mom adopted a sad tone and said they lived too far away to make a second trip back.
"Okay, well, maybe you can find them next time," Mrs. A said. We then collectively dispersed from the desk, our business concluded with no further need for discussion, leaving Mom to look unhappy. After Kayla and family finally left, a good ten minutes later, Mrs. A said that she was worried that she'd offended Kayla's mom by saying we wouldn't hold the books for two days. (It really wouldn't have been an issue had there only been a couple of books, but our hold bin is packed to the gills right now and there isn't room for 20 extra books in there.)
"So what if she is mad?" I said. "What's she going to do? Not come back next week? Yeah, that'll show us."
Monday, June 12, 2006
Barbie T.: Master of the Internet (PART 1)
The situation: Late last week my boss, Mrs. A, secluded herself in her office to take care of “liberry” business. My co-worker, Mrs. B, had secluded herself in our storage area to work on more book donations. Everyone else had either fled town or at least the building. I was therefore Cap’n Solo when it comes to running the joint. I’d just logged a patron onto a computer and was on my way back to the front room when I crossed into the children’s room and saw an unwelcome sight blocking my way back to the desk.
“Excuuuuse me,” Barbara Turdmurkle said in her usual slow, breathy, singsong voice. Her voice was nearly a whisper and she began beckoning me over with quick waves of her hand. Beyond her, I could see there were three people lined up at the circ desk. I SO did not need this.
“Excuuuse me, but I’m going to need your help with something,” she said. Before I could stop her she continued, still in a whisper, “I’ve been getting these very eerie phone calls at my house recently and I think someone may be trying to interfere with my credit.”
“Okay, I’ll be right with you in just a minute,” I said. "I need to go back to the desk." I then wedged my way past her in the door frame
"No!" she said, then remembered to whisper. "no."
By then I was moving away from her at a sideways angle so I could look back at her and still keep moving toward the desk. “I have to go back to the desk."
“No, no,” Barbara said again, frantically waving her hand for me to come back. She too was now edging away, moving back toward the computer hall, “I need your help.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to go to the desk right now.”
“No, I need your help with…”
“I. Need. To. Go. To. The. Desk. Right. Now,” I said.
Barbara blinked at me for a second. “Are you the only one here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m the only one running the desk right now and I have to get back to it, right now. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
With that, I turned my back on her and went to the desk to take care of the patrons who chose to wait in line, rather than in ambush. When I was done and had signed the last of them onto a computer, I returned to the task of Barbara Turdmurkle. She had, by then, come into the main room and was waiting near the desk. Barbara Turdmurkle explained that for the past week she had been receiving odd phone calls at her house. Each time, the caller asked if she was Brenda. Rather than simply admitting that she was not Brenda and that this was likely a wrong number, Barbara T. had chosen to insist they the caller first tell her who they were and then she would say whether or not she was Brenda. The caller, in turn, insisted that she confirm her identity as Brenda first before they would say who they were. Eventually, stalemate realized, one of them would hang up on the other. Or, sometimes the caller would leave a message on Barbara's machine asking Brenda to phone him at a specific number. Adding to the oddity of this, Barbara Turdmurkle claimed the last four digits of the caller’s out of state phone number, as seen on her caller ID, matched the last four digits of her social security number. However, it did not match the number the caller had left on her machine. So Barbara Turdmurkle tried to phone the caller back at his given number. When the other line picked up it was answered, “Accounts.” And when Barbara began insisting that they tell her what sort of business they were running, the person on the other end said, “Brenda? Is this Brenda?” All of this evidence had thus convinced Barbara Turdmurkle that someone was trying to steal her identity and ruin her credit.
Now, I had to admit the events she described were odd, but not beyond the realm of explanation. Barbara Turdmurkle, however, was convinced her evil neighbor was behind it. (I’m not sure if this is the same evil neighbor she’s told us that she’s been to the police about on many other occasions, but it seems likely.)
Fortunately, Barbara is a member of some sort of credit protection program which she phoned right away. They told her they’d send her a credit report, but she needed to go online to their website and check her credit reports that way to make sure nothing seemed amiss. That’s what Barbara needed my help with because, as she said, "I don't know anything about computers."
I think we all know from my past experiences with Barbara Turdmurkle and technology, not to mention with computer neophytes in general, how well this is going to turn out.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
“Excuuuuse me,” Barbara Turdmurkle said in her usual slow, breathy, singsong voice. Her voice was nearly a whisper and she began beckoning me over with quick waves of her hand. Beyond her, I could see there were three people lined up at the circ desk. I SO did not need this.
“Excuuuse me, but I’m going to need your help with something,” she said. Before I could stop her she continued, still in a whisper, “I’ve been getting these very eerie phone calls at my house recently and I think someone may be trying to interfere with my credit.”
“Okay, I’ll be right with you in just a minute,” I said. "I need to go back to the desk." I then wedged my way past her in the door frame
"No!" she said, then remembered to whisper. "no."
By then I was moving away from her at a sideways angle so I could look back at her and still keep moving toward the desk. “I have to go back to the desk."
“No, no,” Barbara said again, frantically waving her hand for me to come back. She too was now edging away, moving back toward the computer hall, “I need your help.”
“I’m sorry, but I need to go to the desk right now.”
“No, I need your help with…”
“I. Need. To. Go. To. The. Desk. Right. Now,” I said.
Barbara blinked at me for a second. “Are you the only one here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m the only one running the desk right now and I have to get back to it, right now. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
With that, I turned my back on her and went to the desk to take care of the patrons who chose to wait in line, rather than in ambush. When I was done and had signed the last of them onto a computer, I returned to the task of Barbara Turdmurkle. She had, by then, come into the main room and was waiting near the desk. Barbara Turdmurkle explained that for the past week she had been receiving odd phone calls at her house. Each time, the caller asked if she was Brenda. Rather than simply admitting that she was not Brenda and that this was likely a wrong number, Barbara T. had chosen to insist they the caller first tell her who they were and then she would say whether or not she was Brenda. The caller, in turn, insisted that she confirm her identity as Brenda first before they would say who they were. Eventually, stalemate realized, one of them would hang up on the other. Or, sometimes the caller would leave a message on Barbara's machine asking Brenda to phone him at a specific number. Adding to the oddity of this, Barbara Turdmurkle claimed the last four digits of the caller’s out of state phone number, as seen on her caller ID, matched the last four digits of her social security number. However, it did not match the number the caller had left on her machine. So Barbara Turdmurkle tried to phone the caller back at his given number. When the other line picked up it was answered, “Accounts.” And when Barbara began insisting that they tell her what sort of business they were running, the person on the other end said, “Brenda? Is this Brenda?” All of this evidence had thus convinced Barbara Turdmurkle that someone was trying to steal her identity and ruin her credit.
Now, I had to admit the events she described were odd, but not beyond the realm of explanation. Barbara Turdmurkle, however, was convinced her evil neighbor was behind it. (I’m not sure if this is the same evil neighbor she’s told us that she’s been to the police about on many other occasions, but it seems likely.)
Fortunately, Barbara is a member of some sort of credit protection program which she phoned right away. They told her they’d send her a credit report, but she needed to go online to their website and check her credit reports that way to make sure nothing seemed amiss. That’s what Barbara needed my help with because, as she said, "I don't know anything about computers."
I think we all know from my past experiences with Barbara Turdmurkle and technology, not to mention with computer neophytes in general, how well this is going to turn out.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Borrowers, Get Out!
Our usual Monday Madness came late this week. It came on a Thursday. And while we had the staff to deal with it, none of us wanted to. We all had our own projects we were trying to attend to and wanted nothing to do with the circ desk.
Meanwhile, the phone would NOT stop ringing and the Brent & Brice auxiliary league of neighborhood kids would NOT stop coming in and demanding computers, which they insisted on sitting at in groups of three per computer, despite being told by Mrs. C and then again by Mrs. A and eventually again by me that they could only have one per cause they’re too damn noisy otherwise. Soon we had a 45 minute wait time for computers due to the backlog of patrons, neighborhood and otherwise. That's when I heard a familiar and horrifying voice at the circ-desk. Yep, it was everyone's favorite Vid-Borrower, Mrs. Bellows.
Mrs. Bellows was turning in all her videos from the last time she was in. On the counter, next to her heaping stack of returned videos, was a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Pepsi and a large clear plastic box with a handle on top in which every ratty-assed audio cassette tape in the world had been crammed. I prayed none of the audio tapes were ours and she didn't open it to disgorge any, so probably not.
After piling all her videos on the desk, Mrs. Bellows seemed to have several brain-farts in a row, then said, "Is there a... do you have one of them... You got a computer I could sit on for awhile?"
No!!! Please NO!!!!
Mrs. C informed her it would be a good-sized wait for one, as they were all still clogged with neighborhood kids for the foreseeable future.
"I'll just be over in the videos, then," she said. Well, naturally.
After about half an hour, the neighborhood kids left in mass and the computers were all finally free. This coincided with Mrs. Bellows finishing her selection of more painfully bad videos and bringing them to the desk for checkout. Mrs. C asked her if she still wanted a computer. No response. And it wasn't like Mrs. Bellows was clear across the room, either. She was right there at the circ-desk. So Mrs. C asked her again, but Mrs. Bellows was far more concerned with obtaining a large plastic grocery bag from us in which she hoped to carry her selection of bad videos home. After loading it full, she stuffed in her box of tapes too, causing the whole thing to bulge.
"Do you have a refrigerator I could put my pop in?" she asked, indicating her half-empty 2-liter. "I want it to keep cold."
Mrs. C said, no, we didn't have a refrigerator. Not precisely true, as we do have a little tiny one, but it's not for public use and Mrs. Bellows would be hard pressed to find room in it for something the size of a 2-liter anyway.
Mrs. Bellows walked away and Mrs. C, seeing that I was about to go refill my water bottle, asked if I would go try to tell Mrs. Bellows she could have a computer. I did and it took a couple of tries to get through to her, but she declined needing one. Then, as soon as I’d fetched my water and returned to cataloging, she decided she needed one after all. Mrs. C, noting my ire, told me to stay put, that she’d take care of it. She went back and logged on the last computer back and then told Mrs. Bellows which one she could use. Naturally, Mrs. Bellows sat down at the middle computer and, since it wasn’t logged on and therefore not of use, began bellowing for help before Mrs. C could even get away.
After that, I sat back to wait for further inevitable bellowing on her part, as she has never been known to use a computer without some need of assistance.
And I waited and waited and waited.
Soon everyone had left for the day except me and Mrs. A, who was still trapped in her office doing work. After a while, Mrs. Bellows collected her overstuffed grocery bag and departed. Only then did Mrs. A come downstairs and ask if I’d heard all the bellowing. Apparently, Mrs. Bellows had been bellowing for several minutes and Mrs. A had nearly abandoned her work to stomp downstairs and tell the woman to stop screaming for help and get off her lazy ass and walk to the front room to ask for it. Oddly, I’d not heard a single bellow, and I’d been listening for them.
I was already thinking that Mrs. Bellows should probably get her hearing checked, but now I’m starting to think I should too.
Meanwhile, the phone would NOT stop ringing and the Brent & Brice auxiliary league of neighborhood kids would NOT stop coming in and demanding computers, which they insisted on sitting at in groups of three per computer, despite being told by Mrs. C and then again by Mrs. A and eventually again by me that they could only have one per cause they’re too damn noisy otherwise. Soon we had a 45 minute wait time for computers due to the backlog of patrons, neighborhood and otherwise. That's when I heard a familiar and horrifying voice at the circ-desk. Yep, it was everyone's favorite Vid-Borrower, Mrs. Bellows.
Mrs. Bellows was turning in all her videos from the last time she was in. On the counter, next to her heaping stack of returned videos, was a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Pepsi and a large clear plastic box with a handle on top in which every ratty-assed audio cassette tape in the world had been crammed. I prayed none of the audio tapes were ours and she didn't open it to disgorge any, so probably not.
After piling all her videos on the desk, Mrs. Bellows seemed to have several brain-farts in a row, then said, "Is there a... do you have one of them... You got a computer I could sit on for awhile?"
No!!! Please NO!!!!
Mrs. C informed her it would be a good-sized wait for one, as they were all still clogged with neighborhood kids for the foreseeable future.
"I'll just be over in the videos, then," she said. Well, naturally.
After about half an hour, the neighborhood kids left in mass and the computers were all finally free. This coincided with Mrs. Bellows finishing her selection of more painfully bad videos and bringing them to the desk for checkout. Mrs. C asked her if she still wanted a computer. No response. And it wasn't like Mrs. Bellows was clear across the room, either. She was right there at the circ-desk. So Mrs. C asked her again, but Mrs. Bellows was far more concerned with obtaining a large plastic grocery bag from us in which she hoped to carry her selection of bad videos home. After loading it full, she stuffed in her box of tapes too, causing the whole thing to bulge.
"Do you have a refrigerator I could put my pop in?" she asked, indicating her half-empty 2-liter. "I want it to keep cold."
Mrs. C said, no, we didn't have a refrigerator. Not precisely true, as we do have a little tiny one, but it's not for public use and Mrs. Bellows would be hard pressed to find room in it for something the size of a 2-liter anyway.
Mrs. Bellows walked away and Mrs. C, seeing that I was about to go refill my water bottle, asked if I would go try to tell Mrs. Bellows she could have a computer. I did and it took a couple of tries to get through to her, but she declined needing one. Then, as soon as I’d fetched my water and returned to cataloging, she decided she needed one after all. Mrs. C, noting my ire, told me to stay put, that she’d take care of it. She went back and logged on the last computer back and then told Mrs. Bellows which one she could use. Naturally, Mrs. Bellows sat down at the middle computer and, since it wasn’t logged on and therefore not of use, began bellowing for help before Mrs. C could even get away.
After that, I sat back to wait for further inevitable bellowing on her part, as she has never been known to use a computer without some need of assistance.
And I waited and waited and waited.
Soon everyone had left for the day except me and Mrs. A, who was still trapped in her office doing work. After a while, Mrs. Bellows collected her overstuffed grocery bag and departed. Only then did Mrs. A come downstairs and ask if I’d heard all the bellowing. Apparently, Mrs. Bellows had been bellowing for several minutes and Mrs. A had nearly abandoned her work to stomp downstairs and tell the woman to stop screaming for help and get off her lazy ass and walk to the front room to ask for it. Oddly, I’d not heard a single bellow, and I’d been listening for them.
I was already thinking that Mrs. Bellows should probably get her hearing checked, but now I’m starting to think I should too.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 5)
In the morning, I found myself very slow to get out of bed. Sure, I wanted to get a good look at our kitty visitor/captive in the daylight, but found I was hesitant to actually do so. What if my daylight glimpse somehow proved this was not the cat? What if all the evidence that had seemed so clear the night before had been misperceived?
I finally got up and went out on the deck, armed with our little Tupperware cup of cat hair samples. Kitty was still quite angry, as any wet trapped cat might be, but he was considerably drier now, thanks to the umbrella. Despite his scowl, he was not an ugly cat, by any means. In fact, he was sort of pretty, though in a hateful, claw-your-eyes-out kind of way. He looked like a small, lighter-colored bobcat, complete with tufted ear tips.
I studied the fur samples in my cup and then studied his damp fur. They still seemed a match in daylight. I could even clearly see the grayish blotches intermingled with the black and sandy colors in his fur, matching the gray hair in the sample. Our sample didn’t contain as much of the two-tone black and sandy hair as he had on his back, but most of Winston’s self-defense back-clawing would have taken fur from the cat’s underbelly, where there was no black hair that I could see. Our miracle-capture looked good, but part of me still wanted more confirmation.
We rolled in to the vet’s office around 8 a.m. Dr. Barrier was just arriving as we pulled up and saw me carrying my new live-trap with its trapped live contents.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
“You got him?” he said, his eyes widening.
“Looks like it,” I said.
Once our trap cage was on the examining table, Dr. Barrier gave the cat a look and said, “Wow, he’s a big guy.”
We passed Dr. Barrier our cup of hair samples and told him what it was. He took one look the sample, then looked at the cat and said, “That’s this cat’s hair, all right.” Those were beautiful words to hear. It was confirmation—from an expert, no less—that I wasn’t just forcing the evidence into a desired mold.
“He’ll probably have some wounds on his stomach, too,” I said, recalling the blood on one of Winston’s back claws. Of course, he probably had a puncture wound as well, since Winston had quite literally broken her tooth off in him.
Dr. Barrier asked us if we knew if this cat belonged to anyone. We explained how it did not belong to any of the neighbors we’d spoken with and that some of those neighbors already knew of it and believed it feral. Granted, it could still have belonged to someone in the area, but I didn’t feel a bit bad about turning it over. I’d seen this thing tearing into my cat with my own eyes. No, I didn’t like that this cat was going to have to die in order to prove whether or not my cat had rabies—and would then either die or live herself—but if a cat was going to have to die in this situation, I was happy to choose the one who had come onto our property and viciously attacked a member of my family. If this cat was infected with rabies, his death would be far more pleasant than the one he would have had. If not, he would be a dangerous and aggressive cat removed from the kitty gene pool.
Dr. Barrier explained that the cat would soon be euthanized and the pertinent bits of him shipped out to a state lab for testing. He said that just looking at the cat, it didn’t seem to be rabid, so likely it was just a particularly aggressive. Being a Friday, we’d probably not hear from them until early in the following week. Still, it bothered me that this cat had attacked Winston at all. She’s the wussiest cat in the world, so she wasn’t the instigator. We don’t have cat food on the deck, so he wasn’t after that. And, having been spayed in 1993, she should not have been a target for mating. The situation seemed comparable to a young punk attacking an old lady for no reason—though an old lady apparently not afraid to scrap it up a bit if it came down to defending herself.
After having her broken tooth extracted, Winston was released to our care, taken home and showered with canned cat food, extra Pounces, painkillers, antibiotics and love. It took her a couple of days to get used to the feeling of having a missing tooth, and her face looks a little crooked as a result, so she’s picked up yet another nickname, “Snag.”
Tuesday morning, Dr. Barrier phoned with good news. The test results on the other cat came back and were negative. Just as he’d suspected, the cat that attacked her was not rabid, so Winston was in the clear, rabies-wise. I scheduled an appointment to come in and get all her vaccinations and a kitty tune up.
This morning, I brought her in for her appointment. Dr. Barrier looked her over and pronounced that her wounds had all but completely healed and her broken tooth looked free of infection. He said she was ready to go outside again whenever she felt like it. So far she hasn’t, but when she wants to I’ll be there to open the door for her.
Winston Churchill: a kitty still poor and little, but as of yet not dead.
I finally got up and went out on the deck, armed with our little Tupperware cup of cat hair samples. Kitty was still quite angry, as any wet trapped cat might be, but he was considerably drier now, thanks to the umbrella. Despite his scowl, he was not an ugly cat, by any means. In fact, he was sort of pretty, though in a hateful, claw-your-eyes-out kind of way. He looked like a small, lighter-colored bobcat, complete with tufted ear tips.
I studied the fur samples in my cup and then studied his damp fur. They still seemed a match in daylight. I could even clearly see the grayish blotches intermingled with the black and sandy colors in his fur, matching the gray hair in the sample. Our sample didn’t contain as much of the two-tone black and sandy hair as he had on his back, but most of Winston’s self-defense back-clawing would have taken fur from the cat’s underbelly, where there was no black hair that I could see. Our miracle-capture looked good, but part of me still wanted more confirmation.
We rolled in to the vet’s office around 8 a.m. Dr. Barrier was just arriving as we pulled up and saw me carrying my new live-trap with its trapped live contents.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
“You got him?” he said, his eyes widening.
“Looks like it,” I said.
Once our trap cage was on the examining table, Dr. Barrier gave the cat a look and said, “Wow, he’s a big guy.”
We passed Dr. Barrier our cup of hair samples and told him what it was. He took one look the sample, then looked at the cat and said, “That’s this cat’s hair, all right.” Those were beautiful words to hear. It was confirmation—from an expert, no less—that I wasn’t just forcing the evidence into a desired mold.
“He’ll probably have some wounds on his stomach, too,” I said, recalling the blood on one of Winston’s back claws. Of course, he probably had a puncture wound as well, since Winston had quite literally broken her tooth off in him.
Dr. Barrier asked us if we knew if this cat belonged to anyone. We explained how it did not belong to any of the neighbors we’d spoken with and that some of those neighbors already knew of it and believed it feral. Granted, it could still have belonged to someone in the area, but I didn’t feel a bit bad about turning it over. I’d seen this thing tearing into my cat with my own eyes. No, I didn’t like that this cat was going to have to die in order to prove whether or not my cat had rabies—and would then either die or live herself—but if a cat was going to have to die in this situation, I was happy to choose the one who had come onto our property and viciously attacked a member of my family. If this cat was infected with rabies, his death would be far more pleasant than the one he would have had. If not, he would be a dangerous and aggressive cat removed from the kitty gene pool.
Dr. Barrier explained that the cat would soon be euthanized and the pertinent bits of him shipped out to a state lab for testing. He said that just looking at the cat, it didn’t seem to be rabid, so likely it was just a particularly aggressive. Being a Friday, we’d probably not hear from them until early in the following week. Still, it bothered me that this cat had attacked Winston at all. She’s the wussiest cat in the world, so she wasn’t the instigator. We don’t have cat food on the deck, so he wasn’t after that. And, having been spayed in 1993, she should not have been a target for mating. The situation seemed comparable to a young punk attacking an old lady for no reason—though an old lady apparently not afraid to scrap it up a bit if it came down to defending herself.
After having her broken tooth extracted, Winston was released to our care, taken home and showered with canned cat food, extra Pounces, painkillers, antibiotics and love. It took her a couple of days to get used to the feeling of having a missing tooth, and her face looks a little crooked as a result, so she’s picked up yet another nickname, “Snag.”
Tuesday morning, Dr. Barrier phoned with good news. The test results on the other cat came back and were negative. Just as he’d suspected, the cat that attacked her was not rabid, so Winston was in the clear, rabies-wise. I scheduled an appointment to come in and get all her vaccinations and a kitty tune up.
This morning, I brought her in for her appointment. Dr. Barrier looked her over and pronounced that her wounds had all but completely healed and her broken tooth looked free of infection. He said she was ready to go outside again whenever she felt like it. So far she hasn’t, but when she wants to I’ll be there to open the door for her.
Winston Churchill: a kitty still poor and little, but as of yet not dead.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 4)
(Just to warn you, I’m about to get all religious on your ass. So atheist and agnostic readers can just sit on your hands for a bit or stick your fingers in your ears and sing the theme song to Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi really loud. Or, if you like, feel free to read on.)
I spent a good twenty minutes putting the live trap together and figuring out how to set it. It was a simple design, but proved quite effective when tested. All it needed was to be baited and placed. I chose our last remaining can of tuna for the bait. I’d nearly eaten it for lunch, earlier, but had decided not to at the last second. I opened the can, then placed the trap in the grass near the deck’s support post and shoved the tuna to the back of it. I then said a little prayer over the trap, but didn’t put much effort into it.
Before bed, Ash asked me if I wanted to pray together. I decided it was a good idea, since I feel like Ash has more bars on her connection to the man upstairs than I often do and I figured she could maybe act as an antenna booster for me.
My prayer was a meandering one over the course of several minutes and with many pauses. I began by thanking God for giving us Winston. She’s been my constant companion and friend through times when I had no one else around. As irritating as she can be, she’s been there with me, and later with me and Ashley, through good times and bad. Winston didn’t deserve the death in store for her. It would be one thing if we knew for certain that the cat that attacked her had rabies, for I would have no problem putting her to sleep to spare her such a fate. It seemed wrong, though, for her to have to die when we didn’t know for sure. This line of thought, however, lead me back to the whole I didn’t get her vaccinated like I should have and am a horrible person line, which just sent me off into self-pity land, mid-prayer. So I apologized to God for not getting her vaccinated and admitted that it was fully my fault. While I didn’t actually say it aloud, I was kind of hoping God would see fit not to allow Winston to die for my mistakes.
While I was on the subject of giving thanks, I thanked God for my family—in particular my step-mother, Myra. A month and a half ago, Myra learned that she has ovarian cancer. By the time it was discovered, it had already metastasized and spread to her colon, which is where they first discovered it. So Myra underwent surgery to remove the masses in her colon and then, three weeks ago, had her first session of chemotherapy. It’s not been a very pleasant experience for her thus far, but she and my dad seem to be dealing with it pretty well and they have a huge chain of people praying them some backup. Earlier on the same evening Winston was attacked, Myra and my dad had phoned to let us know that she’d been in for some tests and had learned that her body seems to be responding very well to her chemotherapy. Her doctors are already suggesting that so far she’s exhibiting progress similar to what they see in patients who go on to have lengthy remissions. She’s not out of the woods by any means, as her chemo sessions are to continue through August. But it’s a very good sign. At that moment, I realized I’d not yet thanked God for Myra’s progress. Quite frankly, I felt very guilty that here I was boo hooing over a cat when my own step-mother was fighting off cancer. At the same time, it also seemed to me that we should use a prayer technique for Winston similar to one we used for Myra.
On many occasions in the past, I have recognized that my control over a given unbearable situation is little to non-existent. On some of those occasions, I have chosen to go to God and offer that situation to him to deal with as he would see fit. There’s something very freeing about this, but admitting powerlessness and actually giving a situation into the control of a being who might say, “No,” is one of the most difficult things you can try to do prayer wise. It sounds easy enough on paper. It seems easy to just say, Oh, well, I can't do anything about this so I may as well give it up to God. However, truly giving something to God is far more difficult. It means you’re not allowed to keep worrying about it. It’s completely natural to want to keep worrying about it, but doing so does not show the proper degree of faith. Sure, you can express your preferences, but once you’ve given it into the creator’s control, it’s time to step back and trust him.
So I prayed then that God would take the situation from me. I had no control over making that cat go into our trap. I hadn’t even used particularly good tuna for bait. But I didn’t want to bear the thought that Winston went to an unfair death because of my negligence to get her shots updated and the only way to prevent that was for us to trap this cat. I had done all I knew to do and it was probably not enough. I therefore prayed that God would lay his hands on the situation, to take it from me and, hopefully, see fit to accomplish what I could not.
With that said, I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath. I tried to release all the anxiety I had over the matter and truly let it go. It must have worked, because I was asleep within minutes and slept remarkably well.
Around 4 a.m., it began to rain very very hard. The roar of the rain alone woke me up, but I probably would have known something was going on because Ashley, as usual, had to get up to go roll up her car windows. Hearing the rain pouring down began to worry me anew. To me it sounded the death knell of my efforts to trap the cat, for the tuna can had surely filled up with water, possibly flooding the tuna out of it entirely and certainly masking the smell. And what kind of cat was going to come out in the rain for wet tuna, anyway? I quickly began envisioning the week ahead—for surely the vet would only give me a week to accomplish my capture before punching Winston’s ticket—during which I would continue to set the trap, night after night and then wait in vain for the sound of it snapping shut. Ashley was right: there was no way this cat would return.
I lay there for several more minutes, unable to sleep, my mind whirring. Shortly, though, I realized that I was becoming ensnared in my own trap. I wasn't behaving at all like someone who had given the matter over to God, for that someone would have given the matter little thought and gone right back to sleep. Instead, I was allowing the hour of the wolf to creep in and stir up dread in my mind.
Once again, I took a cleansing breath and tried to clear my mind of all worry. I lay there for perhaps a minute when through the screen of our open bedroom window I heard a *SNAP * and my eyes shot open.
I wasn’t sure it was the trap, but that was definitely what it sounded like. Part of me didn’t want to believe I’d really heard it, because I didn’t want to be disappointed if I was wrong. But I got up anyway, put on my glasses and went to fetch a flashlight. Ashley woke up as I was doing this and I told her what I'd heard. She didn't seem to understand me and said that she'd checked the trap when she went down to roll up her windows and it had been empty.
“No, I just heard it,” I said.
I went to our bathroom window, opened it and shone the light down onto the ground where I’d left the trap. Staring back at me were two glowing eyes.
“There’s a cat in there,” I said.
“Are you sure it’s not a skunk?”
I was momentarily chilled at the ramifications of trapping a skunk. I’d not considered that possibility.
“No, it’s a cat,” I said.
I put on clothes and flip-flops then went outside into the now light rain and descended the deck steps. Ashley watched from the window above as I turned my light on the cage itself, revealing a large, medium furred cat growling at me. And while its fur was wet, I could see that it was primarily of a sandy color.
“I think this is it,” I said.
I carefully picked up the cage by its handle and held it at arm's length as I started moving toward the steps. The cat growled and thrashed itself against the ends of the cage, throwing it off balance and showering me with tuna water. I held on tight and made it up to the deck itself, where I set it down. Ash came outside and we turned on the floods for a better look. The cat was very wet and much of his fur was dark as a result, but there were actual streaks of dark hair along its back too. Several of his darker streaks were actually sandy colored hair with dark tips. On his underside was a thick layer of soft sandy-colored fur.
“That’s a big cat,” Ash said.
“Yeah.”
“The fur looks like a match, though.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it the one?”
I stared at it for a long time. I was firmly aware that I was now in a situation where I was prone to want to say yes to save my cat’s life. However, if I was wrong and Winston had been bitten by a different cat infected by rabies, we could be in huge huge trouble down the line. It was very important that I was certain this guy was the cat; I couldn’t allow my emotions to rule this decision; I had to rely on the evidence. From the size to the coloration to the attitude, though, the evidence pointed to this cat being the one. And that wide noble face certainly looked familiar. Was I just conjuring that, though?
“I think it’s him,” I said.
We left the kitty in the trap on our deck, but put a large umbrella over the cage so that he wouldn’t be rained on anymore. We then went back to bed where we lay crying with relief for a long time and thanking God for answering our prayer. Eventually we fell asleep.
(TO BE CONCLUDED…)
I spent a good twenty minutes putting the live trap together and figuring out how to set it. It was a simple design, but proved quite effective when tested. All it needed was to be baited and placed. I chose our last remaining can of tuna for the bait. I’d nearly eaten it for lunch, earlier, but had decided not to at the last second. I opened the can, then placed the trap in the grass near the deck’s support post and shoved the tuna to the back of it. I then said a little prayer over the trap, but didn’t put much effort into it.
Before bed, Ash asked me if I wanted to pray together. I decided it was a good idea, since I feel like Ash has more bars on her connection to the man upstairs than I often do and I figured she could maybe act as an antenna booster for me.
My prayer was a meandering one over the course of several minutes and with many pauses. I began by thanking God for giving us Winston. She’s been my constant companion and friend through times when I had no one else around. As irritating as she can be, she’s been there with me, and later with me and Ashley, through good times and bad. Winston didn’t deserve the death in store for her. It would be one thing if we knew for certain that the cat that attacked her had rabies, for I would have no problem putting her to sleep to spare her such a fate. It seemed wrong, though, for her to have to die when we didn’t know for sure. This line of thought, however, lead me back to the whole I didn’t get her vaccinated like I should have and am a horrible person line, which just sent me off into self-pity land, mid-prayer. So I apologized to God for not getting her vaccinated and admitted that it was fully my fault. While I didn’t actually say it aloud, I was kind of hoping God would see fit not to allow Winston to die for my mistakes.
While I was on the subject of giving thanks, I thanked God for my family—in particular my step-mother, Myra. A month and a half ago, Myra learned that she has ovarian cancer. By the time it was discovered, it had already metastasized and spread to her colon, which is where they first discovered it. So Myra underwent surgery to remove the masses in her colon and then, three weeks ago, had her first session of chemotherapy. It’s not been a very pleasant experience for her thus far, but she and my dad seem to be dealing with it pretty well and they have a huge chain of people praying them some backup. Earlier on the same evening Winston was attacked, Myra and my dad had phoned to let us know that she’d been in for some tests and had learned that her body seems to be responding very well to her chemotherapy. Her doctors are already suggesting that so far she’s exhibiting progress similar to what they see in patients who go on to have lengthy remissions. She’s not out of the woods by any means, as her chemo sessions are to continue through August. But it’s a very good sign. At that moment, I realized I’d not yet thanked God for Myra’s progress. Quite frankly, I felt very guilty that here I was boo hooing over a cat when my own step-mother was fighting off cancer. At the same time, it also seemed to me that we should use a prayer technique for Winston similar to one we used for Myra.
On many occasions in the past, I have recognized that my control over a given unbearable situation is little to non-existent. On some of those occasions, I have chosen to go to God and offer that situation to him to deal with as he would see fit. There’s something very freeing about this, but admitting powerlessness and actually giving a situation into the control of a being who might say, “No,” is one of the most difficult things you can try to do prayer wise. It sounds easy enough on paper. It seems easy to just say, Oh, well, I can't do anything about this so I may as well give it up to God. However, truly giving something to God is far more difficult. It means you’re not allowed to keep worrying about it. It’s completely natural to want to keep worrying about it, but doing so does not show the proper degree of faith. Sure, you can express your preferences, but once you’ve given it into the creator’s control, it’s time to step back and trust him.
So I prayed then that God would take the situation from me. I had no control over making that cat go into our trap. I hadn’t even used particularly good tuna for bait. But I didn’t want to bear the thought that Winston went to an unfair death because of my negligence to get her shots updated and the only way to prevent that was for us to trap this cat. I had done all I knew to do and it was probably not enough. I therefore prayed that God would lay his hands on the situation, to take it from me and, hopefully, see fit to accomplish what I could not.
With that said, I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath. I tried to release all the anxiety I had over the matter and truly let it go. It must have worked, because I was asleep within minutes and slept remarkably well.
Around 4 a.m., it began to rain very very hard. The roar of the rain alone woke me up, but I probably would have known something was going on because Ashley, as usual, had to get up to go roll up her car windows. Hearing the rain pouring down began to worry me anew. To me it sounded the death knell of my efforts to trap the cat, for the tuna can had surely filled up with water, possibly flooding the tuna out of it entirely and certainly masking the smell. And what kind of cat was going to come out in the rain for wet tuna, anyway? I quickly began envisioning the week ahead—for surely the vet would only give me a week to accomplish my capture before punching Winston’s ticket—during which I would continue to set the trap, night after night and then wait in vain for the sound of it snapping shut. Ashley was right: there was no way this cat would return.
I lay there for several more minutes, unable to sleep, my mind whirring. Shortly, though, I realized that I was becoming ensnared in my own trap. I wasn't behaving at all like someone who had given the matter over to God, for that someone would have given the matter little thought and gone right back to sleep. Instead, I was allowing the hour of the wolf to creep in and stir up dread in my mind.
Once again, I took a cleansing breath and tried to clear my mind of all worry. I lay there for perhaps a minute when through the screen of our open bedroom window I heard a *SNAP * and my eyes shot open.
I wasn’t sure it was the trap, but that was definitely what it sounded like. Part of me didn’t want to believe I’d really heard it, because I didn’t want to be disappointed if I was wrong. But I got up anyway, put on my glasses and went to fetch a flashlight. Ashley woke up as I was doing this and I told her what I'd heard. She didn't seem to understand me and said that she'd checked the trap when she went down to roll up her windows and it had been empty.
“No, I just heard it,” I said.
I went to our bathroom window, opened it and shone the light down onto the ground where I’d left the trap. Staring back at me were two glowing eyes.
“There’s a cat in there,” I said.
“Are you sure it’s not a skunk?”
I was momentarily chilled at the ramifications of trapping a skunk. I’d not considered that possibility.
“No, it’s a cat,” I said.
I put on clothes and flip-flops then went outside into the now light rain and descended the deck steps. Ashley watched from the window above as I turned my light on the cage itself, revealing a large, medium furred cat growling at me. And while its fur was wet, I could see that it was primarily of a sandy color.
“I think this is it,” I said.
I carefully picked up the cage by its handle and held it at arm's length as I started moving toward the steps. The cat growled and thrashed itself against the ends of the cage, throwing it off balance and showering me with tuna water. I held on tight and made it up to the deck itself, where I set it down. Ash came outside and we turned on the floods for a better look. The cat was very wet and much of his fur was dark as a result, but there were actual streaks of dark hair along its back too. Several of his darker streaks were actually sandy colored hair with dark tips. On his underside was a thick layer of soft sandy-colored fur.
“That’s a big cat,” Ash said.
“Yeah.”
“The fur looks like a match, though.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it the one?”
I stared at it for a long time. I was firmly aware that I was now in a situation where I was prone to want to say yes to save my cat’s life. However, if I was wrong and Winston had been bitten by a different cat infected by rabies, we could be in huge huge trouble down the line. It was very important that I was certain this guy was the cat; I couldn’t allow my emotions to rule this decision; I had to rely on the evidence. From the size to the coloration to the attitude, though, the evidence pointed to this cat being the one. And that wide noble face certainly looked familiar. Was I just conjuring that, though?
“I think it’s him,” I said.
We left the kitty in the trap on our deck, but put a large umbrella over the cage so that he wouldn’t be rained on anymore. We then went back to bed where we lay crying with relief for a long time and thanking God for answering our prayer. Eventually we fell asleep.
(TO BE CONCLUDED…)
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Winston’s Story (Or “The Amazing and Miraculous Thing that Truly Happened to Us”) (PART 3)
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…)
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…)
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.
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