dieciocho de abril
Librarian Madness
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a nightmare. When everything in my life stops, glances in the mirror, and shrieks at its ghastly appearance.
So there I am, dutiful librarian's assistant, shelving the children's magazines. Like Girls' Life and Cricket and Crayola Kids. But this particular issue of Girls' Life was more disturbing than the rest. Grinning up at me is a maybe fourteen-year-old model, her glossed lips parted to reveal perfectly aligned teeth, her young eyes gone false with expertly blended eye shadow and mascara. Not to mention her barely-breasted chest wrapped tightly in the latest fashion. The bold headline: "Is it okay to date my BFF's ex-BF?" Damn, that's certainly a crisis. If only I knew what the hell it meant.
This is not all. Not only is Alex at the counter discussing something to do with "Jaqueline and Jonathan Fitzgerald", the Kennedys, of course, referred to as such because they are obviously close personal friends of Alex (What did you expect? Didn't you know he went to Walnut Hills? Honestly, you ruffian); the retarded people have arrived for their nightly three hour PC Pal extravaganza.
Don't get me wrong. I actually have much sympathy and respect for handicapped persons. I know it's not their fault. But why, why must every slow individual in the greater metropolis of Cleves make a haven of my place of work?!
There are three main groups of people who visit the library. There are 1) The mullets and their offspring, the mini-mullets; 2) The sweet old people (I have absolutely no beef with the sweet old people. I hope to be sweet and old myself one day); 3) The slow folk. The slow folk include weird guy with headset, weird guy who tells we librarians that we look pretty and gives us prizes from the quarter machines, the overbearing and smelly brothers who were once convinced not only that my name was Leia Organa but also that I was Swedish, and the brood of kids (neices and nephews of the latter weird guy)who may be slow...but are probably just rude and stupid.
At any rate, weird guy came in with his neice and she immediately stalks over to the PC Pal (that damn PC Pal...why do kids come to the library to play computer games? What about books? Why the hell is the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County trying to shut itself down?!). However, to her obvious chagrine, there was already a little boy on the PC Pal. And instead of being courteous, she climbs up on a stool next to this perfect stranger of a boy and proceeds to stare at him until he relents and leaves the PC Pal in her greedy clutches. That was 6:30. They didn't leave until we did at closing, at 8:00.
I was just stumbled by her sheer rudeness. And I thought that when I was little I never would have done anything like that. Her behavior was augmented by the later behavior of the stupid fourteen-year-old girls who come in to chat online (again, instead of reading books as would be the purpose of a library) and leave their coats lying in the middle of the floor for me to pick up and move when I need to get by with my cart. Jesus, what is the world coming to?
astera at 11:11 p.m.