The Fatty Fatty Two By Four Appearance (or "More Titles Originally Rejected by Robert Ludlum")

Bout mid afternoon, Chester the (Potential) Molester came through the door. He was wearing his typical little gray knit cap, though not the one with all the holes in it. Similarly, he wore a less ratty-looking vest.

As usual, the first place his eyes went (being as how there were no preteens immediately in the room) was to the top of the mysteries floor shelf where we USED to keep FAFSA forms. The only thing there at the moment are Christmas books and tomorrow, after we put them away, the only thing that will be there are tax forms. Chester looked disappointed, then approached the desk. I made sure to give him my standard and patented monstrous glare of hatred and ire.

Chester's looking pretty fat these days. I'm not saying this judgmentally, as I myself have done nothing but eat since Thanksgiving and I can no longer quite fit into my size 34's and my size 38's are unsettlingly comfortable. I think Chester must have eaten twice as much as me, though, cause he's quite the plump goose. We see him so irregularly, that he might have been gaining for a while now, but the last time I got a good look at him, he seemed to be getting into some form of better shape. He's still a bloated sack of crap no matter how thin he gets, but today he embodied that term far more accurately than in recent memory.

"Uhm... uh... rthere anycmprtrsopn?" Chester mumbled.

"Come again?"

"Uhmm are there any computers open," he repeated.

Normally when Chester comes in, the computers are full, albeit with patrons whose time has run out. In such cases I should technically ask one of them to leave and relinquish their computer to him. However, since Chester only asks if computers are open and not if he can use one, I almost always get to tell him, "No, they're all full." At that moment, though, there was only one computer being used so I had no way to manipulate the truth.

"Yeah," I grumbled, marching back to log him on. I passed a completely different patron and had to make sure to alter the expression of loathing on my face so she didn't think it was directed at her.

After Chester took his place at the computer and I'd returned to the desk, I noticed that his Fugly, parked out front in half hour parking, still had its lights on. Even though a dead battery in it might mean Chester would have to hang around the library to wait for AAA or something, I just couldn't bring myself to be so nice as to actually alert him to it. Mrs. C returned a few minutes later, and wore a similar expression of hatred and ire to my own, having noticed the Fugly out front.

"Is he here?" she said.

"Yup."

"Does he know his lights are on?"

"Nope."

Neither of us made a move to tell him.

"I do have a FAFSA form for him, though, in case he asks," I said, brandishing one of the forms I'd pulled from the huge pile of them we still have behind the desk. "Can I go ahead and fill it out for him? `CHESTER THE EFF-ING MOLESTER'" I pretended to write, substituting Chester's real name to bookend the EFF-ING.

We laughed.

We've had some interesting though not surprising news about Chester recently. One of the local home-school students, Rif, who's been a regular at our "liberry" since he was a tiny kid, is now taking classes at the community college across the road. I was recently regaling him with the tale of arranging for Chester to get a parking ticket for hogging up an hour and a half of our half-hour parking time when he gave me a curious look and asked me to describe Chester for him. I'd assumed he knew who I was talking about, as Chester is the same guy who used to regularly creep out his sister, Magenta, by driving by her repeatedly when she was waiting outside the local dance studio for her ride home. I described Chester's sack-of-Chris-Penn-gone-to-seed-crap appearance for Rif.

"I know who you're talking about," he said, grinning. "That guy is creeeepy! He hangs out at the community college all the time."

According to Rif, Chester likes to hang out in the commons area of the community college where he enjoys casually leaning against walls and garbage cans pretending to read a newspaper while ogling the girls (at least there they're of age) and grinning from ear to ear while he does it. Rif says everyone knows about him and sees him for the creep that he is. We still don't know if he's actually taking classes there or if he's just pretending to be a college student for the girl-watching opportunities. I'd love to know for sure.

Chester left without asking for a FAFSA form, nor did he have any opportunities for ogling.

Hours passed.

Around 6:45, Mrs. C phoned me on her cell phone. She was calling from the local health club down the street where she and Mr. C work out on a daily basis.

"Guess who's working out here tonight?" Mrs. C said.

I knew it immediately. "No!"

"Yes!" she said. "He's wearing his little gray hat and everything."

"Oh, Lord!" I said, trying and failing to stop myself from imagining Chester in workout attire.

Mrs. C seemed to sense this and said, "Yeah, it's pretty disgusting. He's hardly working up a sweat, but at least he's trying. I haven't seen him staring at anyone yet either. Just thought you'd want to know."

I guess Chester's trying to work off some holiday pounds, just like the rest of us.

...another story

I wound up five minutes late getting in to work today because of an extreme post-office emergency. I had several packages to mail out not to mention a mother's day card to my moms-in-law which I failed to mail yesterday. Why? Cause I somehow don't have her address in my address book and my wife's off at the crazy hospital on a psychiatric rotation with her book. By the time I thought to look for alternate means of digging it up today, everyone I know who would know the address had gone to work so I couldn't call anyone. I searched my computer, went through old e-mails, went through old love letters I'd sent to Ashley, but the address was nowhere to be found. Finally, at 25 minutes til 3 (when I had to be at work) I broke down and called my mother-in-law herself.

"Hey, Ma. How'd you like to help me avoid a brutal beating in about four days?"

Ma laughed. "Forgot to mail something yesterday, didn't you?" she said. She's known I'm a goober for a long time now. In fact, she probably could have called me in advance on this one and saved me time. It's okay, though, cause she herself married a goober who never remembers to send a mother's day card until the last minute or later. Ma gave me her address, I grabbed up all my packages and bills and dashed for the car.

At the post office, there were three people in line ahead of me. The first of them was a lady who was sending at least one package of her own with an unnecessary amount of hassle to go along with it. A.) It was almost completely unwrapped, so she had to get the postal employee to help her with that; B) she had to get every form of "extra" the post office offers, from delivery confirmation to insurance to a troop of frickin dancing midgets to deliver it, and had to fill out ninety-seven separate forms to do it. And there I stood, without a stamp to my name and no cash to buy one from the machine. I could have bailed on my eBay packages, but if I was gonna mail Ma's card I was going to have to stand there and wait and mail EVERYTHING just so I could pay with my debit card and get a stamp too. It was already 10 minutes til 3 and I'd been in the post office for at least four minutes already. At 6 minutes til 3, the lady in front finally got all her shit together and sent off. At four minutes til 3, I did too.

So I was late, which made me pissy. I parked my car in the lowest parking spot on the hill, which was pretty much the only available one, what with all the junior college kids stealing our spaces every Thursday.

From then on I tried to get into a better mood but it wasn't easy with the truckload of needy patrons dumped on us. Okay, so there were only two needy patrons, but I couldn't help either of them with their Herculean concerns.
Fortunately, our librarians had thrown a mother's day brunch for the moms in their Thursday Story Hour time and had plenty of leftovers. These kids are little mutie freaks, or something, though. They eat weird stuff like broccoli and cauliflower and fruit. And LIKE it. They also eat cheese, which along with the b&c made for a great mid-afternoon, low-carb friendly snack for me. I was just polishing off my last bite of cauliflower with ranch dippy sauce when Magenta, one of the home-school kids who hangs out in the library came inside and told me she thought my car had been hit.

MOTHER PUSSBUCKET!!!!

I dashed outside and sure enough that's what it looked like. A behemoth of a Dodge Ram truck had somehow wedged itself into the space in front of my car, seemingly backing over my hood in the process. At first I thought maybe its brakes had just gone out and my car was the only thing that had prevented it from rolling back down the hill and killing lots of people. This was a slight comfort. A much greater comfort was the fact that the truck hadn't actually touched my car at all. When viewed from the proper angle, the back trailer hitch of truck was a mere 3 inches away from denting my hood.

After that, my mood was much lighter.