King Kong

We used to have this really great children's librarian.  She was in charge of me when I first started working there, and she made my job so much better (working at a library ROCKS but it's no fun when you have mean people telling you what to do, trust me).  She was fun and easygoing and really understanding.  And one day, she had scheduled an event for kids / teenagers with a guy who either wrote or illustrated, I can't remember which, a comic book about King Kong.  Or something like that.  This was years ago.  Unfortunately, sometimes these things don't really draw a crowd, so there were two geeky (and I mean that in the most loving way possible, as a fellow geek / nerd / what have you) boys in the meeting room.  So she asked me to stop what I was doing and please come in and sit there, too, to beef up the crowd a bit.  I'm actually laughing as I type this because I hardly thought this one tiny weird looking chick was going to make it into a "crowd" but I wasn't arguing.  I was getting paid to sit there.  It was just as well no one showed up because neither did the guy.  How lame is that?  He blew off a library!  Anyway, when we were still waiting, she was flitting around, looking to see if maybe he came in and didn't find the meeting room, and at one point she got so flustered, right before she walked out of the room to check again, she said, "I don't know where he is.  Who knows.  Maybe King Kong got him."

The Importance of Nametags

A long time ago (but not in a galaxy far away), my nametag ripped at the top.  I took it to my supervisor at the time, who just happens to be my favorite supervisor / library employee ever.  Seriously, she is an amazing lady.  I miss working with her since she got moved to another library within the county.  Anyway, she said she would send it away to get fixed, which struck me as very funny because it's just a plastic nametag.  All it said was "Agatha" and underneath that: "Shelver."  No one seemed to notice it anyway because I always get people asking me "do you work here?"  No.  No, I'm just walking around with my library nametag and this giant stack of books for fun.  I'm sitting down here straightening out these books on the bottom shelf, among the dust bunnies and dead beetles, because I'm a crazy person who hangs out on the floor.  So I said something like "Oh well, who cares if I don't have a nametag?  No one reads it anyway."  And she said to me, "It's really important.  Without your nametag, you just become an anonymous shelver girl.  No one writes songs about anonymous shelver girls."

Touche.  She had a point.  However, no one wrote songs about me after I got it fixed, either.  So either I'm just not interesting enough to have songs written about me, or I need to figure out another system of measuring my worth.

The Crazy Old Lady

One thing about libraries is that they definitely attract weirdos.  Nobody believes this at first.  But trust me, hang around a library long enough, and you will see them.  My favorite nutty, senile old lady is "Betty."

Betty has been a patron of this library at least since I started working there, and I'm assuming she has been coming in for long before then.  I don't want to sound like I'm making fun of her here, because she definitely has some brain meltage resulting in crazy behavior.  This is simply to prove my point that the library isn't full of people sitting quietly at tables reading and whispering to each other.  In case I haven't already proved that with some of these stories about other people...

Anyway, here is one of the first things I remember about Betty.

She asked me, in her non-library voice (ie, VERY LOUDLY- this is her only volume), "WHERE ARE YOUR BOOKS ON MENOPAUSE?" 

I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm pretty sure Betty went through menopause a long time ago.  I obliged and showed her the menopause books, which she proceeded to stare at without taking any off the shelf and then tried to hold a conversation with me.  This can be a very tricky procedure, because typically, she'll start a sentence and trail off without finishing it, and then look at you like she wants you to respond, but you have no idea what to say because all she said was "Well, my cousin, he's really good at....."

I have witnessed other librarians ignoring her when she talks to them, which made me feel bad for her, so I always do my best to hold a conversation with her when she starts one with me.  Here is the best one we've ever had, and this is years ago.  She managed mostly complete sentences throughout the whole thing!

"I was at the grocery store and there's a girl who works at the checkout station and she was hitting on my husband!"
[willing suspension of disbelief, here, people...her husband is a short stocky old man that I'm sure no young woman would ever even think of hitting on]
"Oh wow, Betty.  That's crazy!"
"I know.  She was trying to steal my husband!  So I called her a bitch!"
"No way!"
"Well, I was flirting with the guy who works at the deli there.  You know.  He's married though.  And then he was talking to someone else and I heard them say they have to get rid of me.  Do you think that means they're going to kill me?"
"Oh, no, I'm sure that's not what they meant."
"They said they were going to get rid of me!"
"They probably were just going to ask you to leave."
"Well, you know, you can't trust men.  There's too many women out there!"

And on that note, she walked away.  That may be the last sane thing she ever said.

Will You Marry Me?

I think I'm ready  to tell the story of my two marriage proposals.  This is actually very weird for me to talk about, especially since I consider the guy a friend of mine.  Ever since this whole thing went down, I've tried to keep some distance between us, so hopefully he won't try for a third time.
I first started talking to him years ago.  He would ask me about movies or what websites to visit or whatever.  He seemed nice enough.  Then he asked me to hang out sometime, so I said maybe some day after my shift, we could sit and talk in the library.  It seemed harmless enough.  I mentioned it to one of my co-workers.

"So I'm gonna hang out with that guy, you know the one who comes in here all the time, with the backpack, and he's always really red?"

She knew exactly who I meant and proceeded to tell me that he is not only schizophrenic, but bipolar as well.  Yikes.  She told me more about him and some of the specific issues he deals with.  I decided that I would still hang out with him and just see how it went because he seemed to be a pretty lonely dude, and that made me kind of sad.  It went well, he was definitely a strange guy, but really nice and also very apologetic if he ever said anything he considered to be out of line.  One time, he wrote me an apology letter because he thought he was being too flirtatious with me.  I don't even remember what he said to me, so it wasn't even a big deal, but to him it was.

I have all kinds of stuff he's given me over the years, mostly artwork and poetry, with the occasional letter or CD of stuff he decided to burn for me.  So eventually he invited me over to his apartment, and anytime that happened I wouldn't stay long and always had a reason to leave early if I needed to.  So one time, I was there, and we were talking and watching Youtube videos because we're cool like that, and, out of nowhere, he asked if he could kiss me.  I turned about thirty shades of red and managed to say "Uh...no.  No, I don't think that would be a good idea.  At all."  I left not too long after that.  It just got worse from there.  When I saw him at the library again, we had this really weird conversation.

He said "So, I bought some bling earlier today."
"Oh yeah?"  This struck me as weird because he's not the kind of person who wears "bling," or even says things like "bling," for that matter.
"Yeah.  I bought a diamond engagement ring.  I was hoping you would come over tomorrow, so I can ask you to marry me.  What do you think?"
Naturally, I thought he was joking, so I laughed and just said "Yeah sure whatever."

He wasn't joking.

I didn't go over to his apartment, obviously, but he called me the next day and left me these really long messages.  The first one was about us getting married and spending our lives together.  The second one was more along the lines of NEVER MIND, NEVER MIND, IT WAS A BAD IDEA, I'M RETURNING THE RING, SORRY.  So weird.  Then I checked my email and found this ridiculous, overblown message from him (from before he changed his mind, of course).  It was really uncomfortable to read.  He kept going on about our "relationship" and how he couldn't wait for me to be his wife and all this weird religious stuff.  I still get the chills when I think about it...

So that was that.  I never actually said anything to him, but I guess ignoring a person gets the message through.  He stopped coming in on the days that I worked for a really long time.  Months later though, he came in and talked to me but it was excruciatingly awkward, at least for me.  But we started talking more, and eventually things got back to normal. 

About a year later from the first proposal, he came in one day and was acting strange around me, which for him is kind of the usual.  But he was being really short with me and not smiling so I knew something was up.  Then he asked me for help finding a book in the back, and at that point I knew something bad was going to happen, just from the way he was talking to me and acting.  We walked over and he started looking at books, but then turned to me and said "I need to know this right now, so that I can move on with my life, either way, but I just want to know if you will take my hand in marriage.  Will you marry me?" 
Talk about being caught off guard.  I mean, I knew something was up, but really?  A SECOND TIME?  I looked at him and said "no."  And he just said "Ok.  Thank you.  Ok."  And walked away.  And that was that.  I didn't see him for a long time after that, too.  Just recently he came in on a day that I was covering for someone else, so it wasn't my usual day to be there and he started talking to me, I think mostly out of nervousness.  But it was alright.  Pretty soon things got back to how they used to be.  We're cool right now, he likes it when I recommend books for him to read and he tries to give me advice on how to take better care of myself because I pretty much never sleep.  He's always offering to bring me coffee, too, which is nice.

After that second time he asked me though, I have to tell you, I was 99% ready to just quit my job and get the hell out of the library.  It just wasn't worth it to me anymore.  I'm glad I hung in there though.

How I Had the Potential to Become a Homewrecker, But Refrained

I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this knows how much I love reading, and I love it when other people read, and I really love it when parents read to their kids.  This is why I became smitten with this one fellow who came into the library almost every day with his son.  He sat on the floor with his kid and read to him, was very patient when he was interrupted with questions of "What's that?" and such, and was really the only parent I saw interacting with his child that way.  It's pretty sad, if you think about it, that there is one dad in my town who really cares about his kid that much, but that's not really the point of this story.

Oh, and besides being a really awesome dad, he is ridiculously handsome.

Can you blame me for always making a point of putting away children's books while they were in that room?  Don't think of it as me being creepy.  Just think of it as me making my job more enjoyable; remember how boring libraries can be?  Anyway, he started talking to me, just small talk really.  So it got to the point where he always said hi and asked how I was doing and such.  You know, made comments on how quickly I put things away (even though I usually made sure I took my time in there...ahem...) and other equally exciting things. 

So you can imagine my surprise when one day, he came over to me and asked what my plans were for the following evening and would I want to come over and have pizza with him and his son.  What what??  I couldn't believe it.  I told him I would be working at my other job until kind of late, but if that was ok, then I could come over after, and he said ok, and gave me a piece of paper with his number on it.

Score one for me!  But I knew there had to be some kind of catch.

I called him from work the next day.  We confirmed plans, he said by the time I got there his son would probably be asleep, but that was ok.  Then I bit the bullet.

"Ok, that sounds good.  But um...well...I don't want to be weird or anything...but...aren't you married?"
"Oh.  Yeah.  Yeah, I am.  You know what, you're right, maybe we shouldn't do this.  You seem really nice.  I'm sorry."

And then he hung up on me.  I was disappointed times about a million.

I mean, I'm glad I didn't go over and do anything and find out later, because that would have been awful, too.  But this was certainly unpleasant. 

One more reason working at the library is a dangerous job.

Little Kids Can Be Jerks

The shirt I wore to work yesterday was kinda loosey goosey, which was a bad idea, as you will see from the following story.

The first thing I did was put away children's books, so I was in that room with my cart, and I leaned forward to grab some books without thinking about what my shirt was doing.  When I stood up, there was this kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, staring with these big bug eyes.  Then he looked up, right at me, got this really smug look on his face, and then trotted away, occasionally looking back at me with that dumb smug look.  Little perv dude was totally looking down my shirt!!

I felt so besmirched.

These are a few of my favorite things....

...or, you know, things that make my job less annoying, or just bearable on certain days.

1. Carrying a clipboard; it makes me feel approximately ten times smarter, for whatever reason.  That is just the magic of clipboards.
2. I am given a list of books that are 60 days overdue and it is my job to check the shelves to see if they got put away without getting checked in.  The chances of actually finding one on the shelf?  Slim.  So how do you think it makes me feel when I find one on the shelf?  Awesome!
3. I have just reorganized/shifted/shelf-read an entire section.  Now I get to stand there and admire my handiwork before it gets ruined. 
4. Someone comes in looking for something and they looked kind of stressed out.  "I need books on child support.  Like legal guidance for child support."  I love being able to say "Right over here!" and see the look of relief on their face.  This happens even with less important things, like "Where are the Junie B. Jones books?" and they get crazy excited when I point them out.
5. Sometimes, all it takes is a baby making goo goo eyes at me and smiling.  I realize this could happen anywhere, it doesn't have to be at the library, but getting those looks while I'm working makes them even better.
6. At the end of the day, shutting down the computers... It means I get to go home soon and there is something very satisfying about hitting ctrl-alt-delete over and over again.  Who knows why.  This also reminds me of Kris every single time I do it, which makes me sad but happy.
7. Sneaking in reading while I'm working.  You have no idea how often I actually do this.  Once, I even read the entire first chapter of Dracula that was deleted from the final copy of the book, but is in several collections of horror stories.  I love Dracula, and I didn't know there was a deleted chapter until I saw it in one of those books as I was shelf reading, and I couldn't help myself!  No one saw me and told me to stop, which made the whole thing even better.
8. Watching parents read to their kids.  This is surprisingly rare.  Even more rare is a parent reading to their kid, and the kid is paying attention.  I've seen them give up partway through a book because the kid can't sit still and just wants to play the computer games (shudder...).  So when I see a parent, sitting with their child, reading out loud, and the kid is interested, following along, laughing, etc, it's one of the best things in the world.
9. There is this one old lady who comes in frequently, and she compliments me on what a good job I'm doing, and always tells me to have a nice day.  She's always pleasant.  Always smiling.  I wish there were more people like her out there.
10. Book smell.  You know how new books have a good smell?  I like that.  I don't like the semi-old books that have that weird, old person, did-someone-pee-on-this kind of smell.  I LOVE old old book smell.  Those really old, musty books...sigh.  There is one in particular in the library, printed sometime in the 20s, it's Florence Nightingale's notes or something like that, and it smells AMAZING.  I guess it's kind of gross to sniff old books, but hey, I never said I was classy like that.

Old Men & Chick Books

When old men come into the library to look at books and NOT ask me out on dates, I love it.  Old men are awesome.  Especially the cranky ones. 

The other day, this old man was in looking at large print books, which is where I was busy organizing and such.  He made sure he wouldn't be in my way, hung his cane on the shelf and made sure that it wasn't in my way either, and then pulled out a typed up packet of papers and started looking at books and comparing them to his papers.  He told me that he has to type up all of the books that he reads so he doesn't read the same ones twice.  Makes sense.  I don't know what it is about me, but I usually mind my own business, but it doesn't stop people from talking freely to me anyway.  I don't mind, really, but I know I don't strike up conversations with people just because they're in a five foot radius of my body for an extended period of time.  Anyway, he says "My son gives me a hard time about the books I read.  He calls them 'chick books.'"  He points to the books he is currently going throuh and choosng from.  "These here, written by Debbie Macomber."
While part of me was thinking "Ha!  Your son is right!  Those ARE chick books, what the hell, dude?" the rest of me was thinking what I actually said out loud to him: 
"Well, if it makes you happy, then who cares, right?" 
And he said "That's exactly what I say to him."

We had a little moment.  It was pretty cute.

So, what I was doing while I was organizing was pulling books off the shelves from other libraries to make more room because they were getting really packed.  We keep other libraries' books within  the county on our shelves, but when it gets too crowded, I see no point in having them there.  So I told him "The top two rows of my cart here are full of books I'm sending back to the owning libraries, if you want to look through them before I take them away."

I went off to do some work somewhere else so I wouldn't get in his way.  But he made a point of telling me that he took two off my cart, and thanks for telling him.

While he was up checking out, I noticed he left his list of books sitting on the shelf.  I picked it up to return to him, and all I can say is WOW.  That was one hefty packet.  Dude reads A LOT.  I wonder if he's into Fern Michaels and Danielle Steel too!  I didn't peek though.

Summer Reading

Summer reading has taken its toll on me.  There is always about ten times more work to do in the summer than the rest of the year.  And it annoys me that we bribe kids to read with toys and candy and stickers and what not.  Come on people, when I was your age, I looked forward to summer reading because I like to read!  Not because I wanted to win prizes!  This was months of free time for reading without school getting in the way!  Anyway, the extreme workload makes me very tired and cranky and this is why I've been out of commission for a while now. 

However, I have more fun stories to tell.

Here is one of them.

Talking to kids is usually the greatest thing ever, because the ones who aren't shy are so uninhibited, they'll tell you all kinds of stuff you didn't want to know.

This kid was in a few weeks ago, and he was kind of talking to himself, but in a way that I could tell he wanted me to overhear.  He kept saying "Oh, man, I have to get this out for my sister!  She'll have to read it!"  He then explained to me that if he gives her a book, she is compelled to read it, even if she thinks it looks stupid.  So he will purposely pick out things that he knows she doesn't like, just so she is forced to read it through her own compulsions.  How deliciously evil.  I like this kid already.

Then he told me how she gets really into books and will throw fits if something happens in the book that she doesn't like.  At this point, I thought, "I kind of want to meet this girl!  She sounds like she might be slightly insane, and I like that!"  He then went on to explain to me that when one of her favorite characters got killed off in a series that she was reading, she got so mad she threw the book just as he was walking in the room and it hit him in the head so hard that it knocked him out.  He seems like the type to exaggerate and/or make things up, but I decided to believe this story simply because it was too good not to.  I said "Wow, she must really be into those books."
"Yeah, she always reacts that way when she's reading stuff."
"Has she ever done anything more extreme than throw a book at you?"
He thought about it for a bit and then said "Does locking herself in her room and crying for six hours count as more extreme?"

Heck yeah it does!  I can't wait to meet this girl.

Van Halen Guy, Part 2

I was going to keep this blog at least kind of classy, but I realized that all of my funny stories are far from classy. This is probably as far from it as you can get.

Anyway, sometimes (ok...a lot of times), I'm completely wrong about a person.  Remember when I was like, "Oh that Van Halen Guy, he's such a character! That crazy guy!"

Well, he was just a harmless weird guy who I honestly did think was a pretty cool person, until he told me how much he REALLY likes me and wants to have a relationship with me.  WHAT??  Uh, no thanks.  You are old enough to be my dad.  And you also have a daughter who is around my age.  That just doesn't sit right with me, Van Halen Guy. 

Well, thankfully, he stopped coming in on the days I'm there.  Until the day he came in to tell me that, yes, he's been ignoring me, and that he's going to leave me alone now, because I don't feel the same way, and blah blah blah, we all know how that goes.  It was a pretty sad day for me, actually, because before he went all weird on me, he was definitely one of my top five favorite patrons.

Now, before I get to the good stuff (and trust me, if you like bathroom humor, you're going to love this), I have to explain why he has my phone number, because that is what everyone has the hardest time with when I tell them this story.  He has my phone number because before all this, he was just a dude who plays guitar and was interested in my band.  He had given me his number before, so one day I sent out a mass text about my band playing that weekend and I sent it to him.  Because I thought he would like to see my band play.  Ok?  I didn't know he was going to abuse it.

Ok.

Glad we have that cleared up.

So just recently, I got a text from him while I was at work.  He does this thing, instead of texting, or calling and leaving a voicemail, he records himself talking and then texts the audio file.  So I waited until after my shift and I was outside to listen to it.  I was curious, because after all, he was supposed to be ignoring me!

I opened up the file and played it.

It was a fart.

Oh. My. God.  If I could post it on here for all of the internet to hear, I would.  It is glorious in every way that a fart should be.  I mean, it's disgusting as hell, and just the fact that he would even record himself farting, and then send it to someone, is completely beyond me, but it is an amazing fart.  Oh, how I laughed. I'm still laughing, in fact.

Phew.  Anyway.

Then the next day, I started getting more audio files of him talking, but they weren't for me.  It was starting to get annoying, until it got really funny.  If you're offended by bad language, I apologize, but I have to quote this verbatim.

"What the fuck is that, Mike?"

Then another one:

"What'd you do, take a shit in the toilet bowl?  Is that what that is?"

Then the final one:

"Oh, so that's what that is, I thought maybe you got a picture of my ex-wife, swimming.  Very good!"

I was getting only one half of the conversation, but oh, how funny it was. 

The next day I started getting pictures of his guitars. This was a pretty regular occurrence with him, so I wasn't fazed by it.  If you remember from the first post about VHG, he LOVES to talk about his guitars and sent me multiple pictures of them - different angles, close-ups.  But this day, it went:

Guitars, guitars, guitars, poop, guitars, guitars…

Wait, WHAT??

Yeah.  Unless he had reused the picture his friend apparently sent him that looked like his ex-wife, this was a fresh poop picture.  Try waking up from an almost-nap to THAT, people.

Anyway, somehow he realized that I was getting his text messages, and I got a somewhat nervous, frantic sounding apology audio file text from him.  Apparently I was in his groups and so he was sending texts out to everyone, including me.  Oops.

I kind of hope I never see him again, because all I will see when I look at him is his poop.

That picture still haunts me.

But I still haven't deleted that fart text.  How could I?

Drug Dealer

This happened a while ago, but it's too good not to share.  I sort of knew this kid because he would come in all the time with his annoying girlfriend and use the computers.  He was kind of a pain in the ass, like one time I saw him eating a hoagie at one of the tables in the back.  Really, man?  A hoagie in a library?  Gross.  But the thing is, it's hard to dislike him because he's so polite!  He asked me my name one day, and introduced himself to me, and every day I saw him after that he would say hello and he remembered my name.  I saw him chatting with a cop in the library once, and he was so pleasant and making jokes and stuff (yes, we have cops come into the library sometimes; usually because a librarian calls them in to monitor some fishy behavior, like I mentioned before with Van Halen Guy threatening another patron).  If you read the title of this particular piece, you would guess this kid is/was a drug dealer.  Let's pretend his name is Chris.  The other librarians referred to him as "Drug Dealer Chris."  I had no idea about him, but once they told me his nickname, it all made sense.  The annoying girlfriend, the hoagie, the random shady looking characters that would come in and talk to him in the back of the library and then leave…

He ended up in jail (shocking!) but not for dealing drugs.

He broke into someone's car, stole their GPS, and then took it to a pawn shop.  When he filled out the paperwork, he used his name and information.  When the guy at the pawn shop turned on the GPS he saw that it was registered to someone with a different name.  So he called the cops and it wasn't hard to find him, since all of his information was on the paperwork.

Real genius.

Very polite, though.

Annoying Smelly Computer Guys

Occasionally, you get the really awful people who come into the library, and even though it's a public place and everything is free, you wish you could institute some kind of rule to keep people like them out.  Take, for instance, the annoying smelly computer guys.  They are a father / son team.  They come in solely to use the computers, which is fine for people who don't have the internet at home, or people who need to print things out who don't have printers at home...I get it.  Computers are an important resource, and libraries should provide them for free. 

But these guys are just a completely different story.  My main problem?  They come in to use the FREE internet and then COMPLAIN LOUDLY how their computers at home are SOOOO MUCH FASTER THAN THIS.

Seriously guys?  I mean, seriously?  It's FREE.  Go home and use your own stupid internet instead of coming in here and annoying everyone in the building with your nonsense.

So you understand the "annoying" and "computer guys" parts of their name, but there is also the "smelly" bit.  Yeah.  Not only are they totally obnoxious but they smell bad, too.  These are the kind of people there need to be rules about.

NO USING THE FREE COMPUTERS IF YOU ALREADY HAVE ONES AT HOME THAT YOU ARE GOING TO LOUDLY PRONOUNCE TO EVERYONE ARE MUCH BETTER THAN THESE. THAT ARE, ONCE AGAIN, FREE.
ALSO, TAKE A SHOWER.

Yeah, so I have some pet peeves, but can you blame me?  Oh yeah, and on top of all that, the kid once got caught looking at porn on one of our computers.  Guess who saw him?  No, not me.  It was a little five or six year old boy.  Now, as for me, I really have no problem with porn in general, but looking at it on a public computer where you don't know who else is looking is just wrong.  Plus, what are you gonna do?  Jerk off under the table?  Yeah, like no one is gonna notice that.  Go home and use your really fast internet for that stuff, annoying smelly computer guy.

The Dirty Joke

Ok, I've talked about him enough, so here you go: the story of the dirty joke guy. 

He would come in, and even if you didn’t see him, you’d hear him.  He has one of those disgusting smoker coughs, but it was always especially loud and forceful.  And sometimes it would just come out as a strange “AAGHGHH” instead of a real cough.  He would always smile strangely at me and say “Hello!” and sometimes ask me if a movie was good or not.  I was always very polite to him.  One time, he came and found me where I was putting books away and told me about this commercial for a car, with all these little woodland animals singing, and then a wolf shows up and frightens the other animals.  I’m not sure what the point of him telling me about it was, but he went off cackling like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, followed by several of his signature coughs/weird noises.  One of the circ librarians, who is my supervisor, asked me if I had ever heard his penguin joke.  I said no.  She said that every time he comes up to the counter, if it’s remotely cold out, he makes the same penguin joke.  I finally heard him tell it to her one day.
“Hey!  You know it’s so cold out there, I saw penguins ice skating in the parking lot!!”

The dirty joke incident happened one day when I was walking towards the front of the library, just going past the children’s section, when he intercepted me.

“You want to hear a really funny joke?”

He looked so eager and excited to tell me, I figured, why not? “Ok.”

Now, what made the joke so inappropriate was the fact that we were in a library, in front of the children’s section, and I’m an employee.  It’s not like I haven’t ever heard anything like that before, but when this guy is known for finding a car commercial funny and his big joke is about ice skating penguins, how could I have expected his really funny joke to be about a parrot fucking chickens?  Yes, he said the word “fucking.”  Twice.  In front of children.  Did I mention he’s a little hard of hearing, and talks quite loudly?  Yeah.  It was extremely awkward.  He walked off laughing and wheezing, and I stood there, not entirely sure what to do.  It was not one of my prouder moments.  I felt like everyone was watching me, and another patron went up and complained about his language, but by the time another librarian came over to me, he had already walked away and there was nothing anyone could do.

I avoided him for a long time after that, always finding work to do in the meeting room or in the work room so he couldn’t talk to me.  The other librarians were very understanding and are still always on the lookout to protect me from the creepy people like him.  After a while, I started to feel bad about it though, because he obviously had no idea how tasteless the joke was, and was probably just trying to make me laugh.  I stopped avoiding him but he stopped coming in as often anyway, which is just as well.

If you're curious, here is the joke, without the swearing.  But when it says he "annoys" the neighbors' chickens, well, you know what it really means.

When Libraries Attack!!

Everyone is always surprised when I hurt myself at my job.  Libraries seem like a safe place, besides the occasional paper cut, right?  But it's just the opposite.  I'm constantly dodging falling books, and sometimes the shelves jump out and bite. 

Well, not really.

But one time, I was putting away books and I snagged my finger on a loose screw sticking out of the shelf.  It didn't seem like a big deal until I noticed I was bleeding.  A lot.  It had ripped quite a bit of skin out of place.  I was walking back to see if we had band aids anywhere, and that volunteer guy who asked me out on a date (before that happened though) saw me and asked what was wrong so I showed him.  He said "Wow.  How did you do that?  Was it from punching that guy?"  (This was an allusion to the old man with the horrible joke, which I still have yet to tell...)

Just recently, I had another shelf attack.  I bumped my finger but then noticed it hurt a lot more than if I had actually just bumped it.  I looked closer and realized there was a paint chip from the shelf jammed under my fingernail.  How did that happen?  I didn't even care.  I just wanted it OUT OF THERE.  I tried not to run over to the circulation counter, and had to wait for what seemed like forever for one of my coworkers to be free.  I had no idea where to find some tweezers, because that was the only thing that was going to get it out.  Then when they finally were able to pay attention to me, they stood around discussing the possible options and came back to me with giant scissor looking things.  There was no way I was trying to get this tiny paint chip shoved in such a sensitive spot with those monstrosities.  Finally, I got my hands on some tweezers and had it out in a few seconds. 

This just goes to show you that the library is anything but safe.

And I wasn't kidding about dodging falling books.  It seriously does happen.

Funny People

Sometimes, I get to hear the funniest things from the people who come into the library.  Only, sometimes I can't laugh because it's only funny to me, not to them.  That is probably one of the most difficult things I have to do.

One day, a man came in and asked me where he might find books on plumbing.  I usually don't ask why people are looking for a certain book, unless it really captures my interest, but sometimes they'll just volunteer the information.  I showed him the plumbing books, and he said "Oh, yeah, this is great, thanks.  My wife fell on the bathtub faucet and broke it right off."
You can see why this is funny, right?  I imagined so many different scenarios in my head, all of them hilarious, but all I could say to him was, "Well, I hope you can find what you need here."
But if your wife is that clumsy and has enough girth to break the faucet right off, no book is going to help you.

I have one other moment like this that I can remember off the top of my head.  A guy came in and had looked up the number for a book, but couldn't find it, so he wanted me to help him.  What was the book?  It was about bigfoot.  Again, I don't need to know why you are looking for a book on a mythical creature, but sure, feel free to explain yourself anyway.
"Yeah, uh, it's not for me, it's for my stupid friend.  Yeah, he's high all the time.  Thinks he saw something."
That is the one time I nearly lost it and laughed in a person's face.  The way he said it, the whole idea of his "friend" thinking he saw something that was almost certainly bigfoot, well, it was almost too much for me to handle that day.

Crazy Town

The day they installed children's games on the library computers was a dark day.  No longer could I look forward to silence while I was at work; instead, I get to look forward to hearing the same voices say the same things over and over and over again.  They used to be out with all the other computers but eventually got moved into the kids room, but it didn't matter; you can still hear Elmo loud and clear from the furthest point away from the computer.  It's absolute torture.  You might think it's not that bad, but really it is.  I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to take a sledgehammer to those computers.  It's not just the annoying voices and sound effects (although that is a major part of it), but it's mainly the repetition.  In the span of one game, I can hear the same phrases and noises at least fifteen times.  Now, multiply that by the dozens of kids who come in to play the game in the five or six hours that I'm working, and maybe you can start to see how this affects me.  I had started writing this post a while ago, and in light of my last post this seems so irrelevant and part of me thinks, who the hell cares about this stuff anyway?  But life goes on even when tragedy strikes and I'm trying to put the pieces back together and move on, and if it takes talking about annoying computer games to do that, then that's what's happening. 

Elmo is the absolute worst invention ever in the history of children's characters, and this is coming from someone who thinks Jim Henson was a genius.  But it's not just Elmo and his stupid voice.  It's Dora the Explorer.  And Spongebob Squarepants.  And something called Reader Rabbit and the stupid mouse character that does all the activities.  And the skeleton guy.  Oh, that skeleton guy.

I'm not sure why it's not there anymore, but there used to be a game where you could have Green Eggs and Ham read to you, along with animations and various sound effects.  That sounds amazing, right?  WRONG.  Don't misunderstand me, I absolutely love Dr. Seuss, and in particular Green Eggs and Ham, since that book is what taught me to read.  But imagine a really obnoxious voice, one that overdramatizes.  Every.  Single.  Word.  And that's what Sam sounds like.  Now imagine a grumpy old man voice, and you have the other character.  Throw in annoying overdone cartoon sound effects and that's essentially the whole thing.  It was enough to make me want to gouge out my eardrums. 

Reader Rabbit might even be worse than that, though.  I have no idea how the game got that name, because there is absolutely nothing there that teaches kids how to read.  There are games where they color, do hand motions to certain songs, pop bubbles, do shape puzzles, but NOTHING involving reading.  That really bothers me!  And then I have to hear the Itsy Bitsy Spider eight times in a row, usually with the kid playing the game singing along.  Badly. 

Spongebob Squarepants used to be a show that I enjoyed watching, as stupid as it is.  I never realized just how annoying he was until the game happened.  First of all, it's a typing game, like Mavis Beacon, only with Spongebob and Patrick and Squidward.  Kids who watch Spongebob don't understand what typing is or that the point of the game is to type things correctly.  They just bash away at the keyboard, making bugs squish (with disgusting sound effects) all over the windshield.  Mr. Krabs' voice, saying the same things over and over again: just awful. 

Then there's the skeleton guy.  I have the smallest problem with this game compard to the others because I'm partial to science and biology in particular, and this game teaches human anatomy.  That's pretty cool, even if his voice is dreadful.  But what really gets me?  The alarm clock.  I'm not sure why you have to wake him up for the game to start, but you do, and not only does it sound like the computer broke and is beeping in that "warning! warning!" kind of way; but it sounds just like the alarm clock I had when I was in high school and I get flashbacks of waking up at 5:30 in the morning and waiting for the bus in the cold...ugh. 

And these games are just a smattering of what's available to play.  There's a whole slew more of this junk that I get to hear on a daily basis.  So there you have it: my slow but sure descent into Crazy Town.  My eye is twitching just thinking about going to work tomorrow.

Kris

I have refrained from using anyone's real name in here and I plan to keep on doing so, but not this time.  This is a big deal to me and I can't imagine not using his name in here.  In my last post, I mentioned a guy flirting with me before moving to the other side of the world.  That guy was Kris.  I know I made it sound like it happened that one time and then he was gone, but it was much more involved than that.  I wasn't going to elaborate on it at all except that I just found out that he has passed away, and it makes me want to share our story even though it's extremely brief.  This happened at the end of June, just this past year.  I had seen him in the library on and off for a long time but never really talked to him until more recently. 

We talked in the library twice, the first time when he introduced himself and we talked about music and he told me that he's from Australia (yeah...on top of everything else...an Australian accent.  Swoon).  He was adorable.  No two ways about it.  Everything about him.  The next time I saw him, he wanted me to help him print out forms so that he could mail things to himself in Australia.  He told me he was moving back there that weekend.  I was kind of shocked, but I figured that's just my luck.  He wrote down his name for me and told me to find him on facebook.  So I did.  Imagine my surprise when, over a week later, he accepted my friend request and wrote on my wall telling me that he was leaving for Australia TOMORROW.  I found out later that he missed the original flight.  This was my second chance!  I was at my other job and I went on facebook when I should have been working, but this was perfect.  He left me his phone number so I sent him a text to come hang out with me at work.  He said he would love to but had no way of getting there.  So you know what happened?  My boss let me leave and go get him and then bring him back while another girl covered for me.  It made me so happy.  I brought him back, he hung around while I finished my shift, and then I took him home with me.  I was housesitting for some friends, so we went to their house and I decided we were not sleeping.  We were going to make the most of this time together and stay awake the whole night.  We almost did, falling asleep at 5:30am and then waking up at 7.  That night will always stay with me.  I hate to sound so cheesy and cliched, but we really connected.  We liked a lot of the same music, and laughed at all the same things, and I could listen to him talk for hours with that accent.  It was so amazing.  In the morning, I took him back to his place so he could start packing and get ready, and I went back home but then went to his place after a little bit.  He was sending me threatening texts, too, saying "you better hurry up, you have one minute!"  So I pretty much sat there and watched him run around shoving things in a suitcase.  But I still wouldn't trade that time for anything.  We listened to music together; he turned the volume all the way up on one song to annoy the upstairs neighbors because he said they were always waking him up too early in the morning, running around and stuff.  I always think of him when I hear that song, and I know I always will. 

The time came too quickly that his ride showed up to take him to the airport.  I'll never forget him walking me to my car and giving me a kiss and then running and jumping into the van, smashing his face against the window at me and blowing kisses and they drove off.  He called me from the airport.  Twice.  He called me when he was back in Australia.  We could talk for hours.  We facebook messaged.  Facebook chatted.  We texted.  But we both got busier, he was going back to school and doing volunteer work, and we had less time to talk and text.  But every time we talked he told me he loved me and always said "miss you heaps" and we would never be able to hang up.  It would take forever to say goodbye, and he would make me hang up first.  We weren't technically a couple, but we both obviously liked each other, and had the circumstances been different, we probably would have ended up dating.  He was probably coming back in December and we would have a week or two together.  Well, I started dating someone else.  I told him, and he was sad, but he was ok with it.  His main concern?  If I was happy.  I cried during that conversation, because I realized just how sweet he was.  He told me he was seeing someone else too, but that he was already over it and didn't see it going anywhere.  That made me feel a little better, that it wasn't just me.  We still talked, but less frequently.  He didn't come in December.  Partly because of me, I think, but there were probably other reasons too.  I guess I'll never know.

We talked once more, on December 22nd.  He texted me to ask if he could call because he missed talking to me, so I said yes, and he called.  We talked for about an hour.  He was so tired and sounded like he was getting sick but he still wanted to talk.  He asked me everything that had been going on since we last talked, and it was a good conversation.  I'm kicking myself now because he called two more times after that, and I missed the calls but never called him back.  I texted him twice, once the day before he died, and one after he had already passed.  I didn't find out until a week after it had happened.  I can't tell you how much it hurts.  He was such a special person, and he made me feel special too.  He never missed an opportunity to make me feel great about myself.  He also never got tired of making fun of how he said hello to me outside the library that day we first talked, and I ignored him.  I don't know how many times I explained to him that I didn't realize he was talking to me, but he still gave me a hard time for it.  We always laughed about that.  Even though I never told him how I felt about him, I hope that he knew.  I guess none of this is really too relevant to my blog, except that here is someone I met at the library and he deeply affected me and now he's gone.

This is for you Kris.
I miss you.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox