Patron: “Can you help me scan this and change the date at the top?” [hands over an insurance claim of some sort]
Staff: “Oh, I’m sorry, our scanner is broken.” [I fibbed. I ain’t gonna help you falsify your documents!]
Patron: “Then can you help me retype this in Word? Or should I use Excel? I can’t remember which one to use for this stuff.”
Staff: “Try Excel and come find me if you need help printing.”
Patron: “Thanks for your help.”
Patron: “You all have the newspaper?”
Librarian: “Yes, you can take this one right here… just fill out this slip.”
Patron: “Okay, but do you have other days’?”
Librarian: “Oh sure, just write down whatever date you need and we’ll get it.”
Patron: “Okay, well, do you know of a good one?”
Librarian: “A good one? Sure, yesterday’s was good.”
Patron: “Okay, I’ll take yesterday’s.”
Older Lady: “I want a book of poems from the most famous British poet of the 19th Century.”
Librarian: “Well, the 1800’s were rife with famous poets, it will be hard to choose the most famous.”
Older Lady: “Well, which ones hung out with Wallis Simpson?”
Kid: “You got two movies in?”
Librarian: “What’re the names of them?”
Kid: “Death Race and Death Race 2.”
Librarian: “Okay, let’s see…”
Kid: “You should really see those movies! They have cars with guns on them and”
Librarian: “it doesn’t look like we have”
Kid: “armor and there is just one rule”
Librarian: ”them in right now, I can order”
Kid: ”you either win or you lose but if you lose”
Librarian: ”them if you have your library card with”
Kid: ”you die. There are a lot of guns and stuff.”
Librarian: “—”
Kid: “So do you got ‘em?”
Librarian: “How old are you?”
Kid: “Seven, but don’t worry, I know how to play the game. I got my uncle’s card.”
Librarian: “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Remember Lipstick Mask Lady? Well, I haven’t seen her in a while, but she came into the library today. She went straight for the bathroom key, and stopped to ask a question with it clutched in her hand. When another patron inquired about the key she said, “Oh, honey, you can take it, but hurry. Hurry. I need to keep it near. I had some cheese for lunch and it is killing me. KILLING ME.”
When she got it back, she toddled off to the bathroom for about a half hour. Afterward, she kept the key with her again. When yet another patron asked about it, she said, “Oh, but puh-lease bring it back straight to me. I had some provolon-ee today, just two little pieces, and boy is it killing me. Don’t ever eat provolon-ee if you can help it, well, if you don’t have a problem with cheese, I guess it doesn’t matter, but HURRY AND BRING THE KEY BACK!”
In the meantime, I was helping her transfer files from one flash drive to another because “honey, I learned my lesson, I dropped my old one in the dishwasher and I lost all of the books I wrote!”
One of the file names on her disk: Cabbage Patch Witches.
In the children’s room.
Man, calling from his laptop: “I lost the little red running man!”
Librarian: “Huh?”
Man: “I was filling out a form, clicked away for a minute, and lost the little red running man.”
He was talking about the Adobe logo.
Patron yells on phone: “No, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to my fur person.”
Woman: “Bless you, are you the one where your hair is falling out?”
Librarian: “Huh? No.”
Woman: “I talked to someone before and I found an herb that will help her hair from falling out.”
Librarian: “I don’t know who that would have been.”
Woman: “I don’t either but she’s nice like you and she was young, too.”
A sweet, soft-spoken tweenage girl walked up to the reference desk.
Girl: “Hi!”
Librarian: “Hello. Can I help you with anything?”
Girl: “No, I just wanted to say hello. What’s your name?”
Librarian: “Mary. Umm, what’s yours?”
Girl: “I’m Deanna. So, what do you do when you aren’t sitting in that chair?”
Librarian: “—”
Girl: “Do you want to meet my mother?”
Librarian: “Um, okay.”
Girl [yells across room]: “Mom, this is my friend, Mary! She works here! Isn’t she pretty?”
A little boy was wandering around the non-fiction section. I asked, “Can I help you?”
Little boy: “I need to write report on New Hampster and I can’t find anything!”
Lady: “I need books on fruits and vegetables.”
Librarian: “Can you be more specific? Are you doing a project? Canning? Cooking? Do you want nutrition info? Kids’ books?”
Lady: “I just need to know some arthurs. It’s for a class.”
Librarian: “Huh?”
Lady: “Just show me where the books are. Are they over here?” [walks away]
As I was walking through the children’s area today, I noticed a little boy (3-ish) sitting on a chair at the end of a bookshelf. He had bare legs. His pants were at his ankles. I walked up to him and he smiled cherubically. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Pretending to go poop.” he said.
