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.