Storyteller, fit the first

"I could get drunk if I wanted to."

I'd thought I recognized him out of the corner of my eye as he entered. He's hard to miss, and he always comes straight to the desk to tell me stories. You'll hear more from him, without doubt. When I looked up from my typing to see what Storyteller wanted, he withdrew from his pocket a small bottle of liquor.

"It's 90 proof," he told me with a wide grin.

"You can not have that in here."

"Wh... Uh... I... just had it given to me!" he protested.

"Doesn't matter," I said. You need to take that out of here.

"But... I won't drink it in here."

"You can't have alcohol in the library. Take it out."

"Okay," he finally agreed, looking contemplative. His eyes brightened, and he asked "Can I just take it out and set it outside the door?"

"No, a little kid could pick it up. You need to leave, right now."

Not three minutes later he came back and claimed his buddy had driven by, and he gave him the bottle to take home.

Don't bother, I'll give them to you

Picture a man, about 5'6" and 260 lbs. His beard has clearly not been trimmed in, at a rough estimate, at least six months. He leans back, nearly reclining, as he stands, even as he walks, seemingly using his head as a counter-balance against his belly. He wears a baseball cap, a t-shirt tucked deeply into jersey shorts that are pulled as high as they can be, black Velcro-fastened shoes, and long, white socks, drawn as his shorts to their vertical limit.

I can't begin to guess his age, or that of the teetering woman with whom he peruses the movies, but he calls her "Momma." Could be his mother, could be his wife. My grandparents call each other Mama and Daddy. (I know the spellings of Momma/Mama are inconsistent here, that is intentional, in deference to how my grandparents spell it [Mama] and how it seemed the man in question, based on his manner of speech, would have spelled it [Momma.])

He speaks very slowly, dragging each word from his mouth as though with great effort. Every syllable lasts about 2 1/2 times as long as it would if spoken by most other people in this area. I can hear a slow exchange between the two about the distinct lack of worthwhile films (not a quote, by any stretch of the imagination) in our collection as I approach the area with an armload of DVDs to reshelve.

"Heeey maw-muh," he quietly strains. "We could jes' rawb them deebeedee players what he's got thay-uhr." I suppose I could have continued shelving, but instead I turned to the table behind me, set down the movies, and left them in a pile through which the pair could rifle.

Premonitions

When she asks "Is my book in," I know before asking my standard first question that she will answer in the negative.

"Did somebody call you?" I ask anyway.

"No." Of course. "But it should be in. I ordered it over two weeks ago."

"Okay," I say. "Let's see if something has gone wrong with the reservation. What was the title?"

"Um," she exhales, a three-second-long syllable breathed forward as her eyes roll up toward the ceiling. "I think it was Love's Neverending Love."

I pause. "Love's Neverending Love."

"Yeah," she assures me.

"Was the author Janette Oke?" I ask. Snobbery, I realize, to assume that a generically sappy incorrect title from someone I assumed to be a tad dumb the moment I saw her was a Janette Oke book, but in this case I'm correct. "Okay then, let's look search for that title." Naturally we don't have it. I'm certain there is no book by the title Love's Neverending Love. But I have to show her it doesn't exist before we move onto the next step, which is me reading to her every Oke title we own that either ends in love or contains some variant of neverending or enduring. She shoots down every one. Same with Amazon's list.

During this search, she actually tells me "You do have it, you just can't find it." Really. "It's from a series," she eventually tells me. So we open the series list, she comes to the slow, slow, god-it's-so-slow realization that it's the Love comes softly series, and that Love's Neverending Love is actually Love Finds a Home.

I tell her that book is in, there must have been a mix-up with her reservation, and I'll take her to it. She says it's not on the shelf, she already looked. I say I'll help her look. She wanders off halfway there, so I call her back, and she says I'm in the wrong area, it's Large Print. Didn't mention that before either. Back to the computer, it is checked out, she is on the reserve list, and it's not due back for another week, so the 'over two weeks ago' time frame she quoted me was actually less than one week.

DIY?

In an incredulous tone, the male half of a very noisy couple I'd never met before exclaimed "Advanced dental care?!" as he pulled a telephone book from the shelf. I could almost feel his disappointment as he realized it was an ad, not a title.

Misshelving is the only rational explanation

"I rented the other day..."
While she paused to think, I wanted to tell her to stop right there, that this couldn't end well, that no conversation I've ever had has been entirely pleasant if the other party thinks s/he 'rents' from the library.
"Um..." she hesitated again. "Four tapes of Roots, I rented four tapes of Roots, 'cause you know you can only rent four at a time, ya know?"
"Yes." I considered how best to ask her what her question was as I waited to see if she would actually ask it.
"Well, and there are more than four tapes, and I want to watch the rest, but I can't find 'em."
"Oh," I brightened up. This should be easy. "Okay, they'll be... well, they would be right here if they were in, but it looks like the entire series is checked out."
"No," she said, shaking her head slowly, maintaining eye contact. "I checked out the first four."
"Right..." Again, what is she asking? "Somebody else has checked out the rest of them."
"No," she repeated. "I had the first four, and I just returned them. Just now."
"Yes, so somebody else must have checked out the last ones while you had the first ones."
"No," she insisted again. "That would mean they watched the last ones without seeing the first ones. That'd be out of order. They must be in the wrong spot."
"..." Though an ellipsis can't be verbalized, I'm fairly certain I stood silent for at least a second or two with my mouth open. "Maybe they checked out the first ones before you did."
"..." Her mouth was mostly closed during her ellipsis, her jaw jutted to one side and her brow furrowed. "Oh. Yeah, I guess so."

Just Another Day in Paradise

(Written to the accompaniment of screaming, crying children leaving story hour. What exactly do they do in there that makes the children so unhappy?)

Patron: "Sometime back I read an article about chickens in a Mother Earth News Magazine. Can you get it for me?"

Me: "Do you recall when you read it?"

Patron: "No, it's been awhile. But it was about chickens. Exotic breeds of chickens."

Me: "Let's see if I can find a listing for it on their website (which I do, find the date--Feb/Mar 2005--retrieve the issue from another floor of the library, and give it to waiting patron)

Patron: "That's it!" and goes off on his merry way.

Same patron, three minutes later: "It didn't have pictures so I don't need it. I sure thought it had pictures but it's been a long time since I looked at it. Here it is back."

No "thank you", no "I'm sorry you went to all that trouble", just a wasted effort on my part.

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Seen from a far: Mother looking up titles on OPAC as her 9 or 10 year old son approaches her with a baseball book, big grin on his face, saying "look what I found!" She snatches it from it, opens to a page, & thunders, "you can't have this! Go sit over there until I'm finished". Which is when she comes to me & asks for a particular author, saying "he's a Christian." Too bad she isn't.

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Related from the circulation desk:

A young man came in to get a library card. When asked for ID, he pulls out his card showing he is a recently registered sex offender with the state. Now that takes balls!