Library Patrons are a Wierd Bunch

Library patrons are wierd. Granted, since the library is a free and public place, you're apt to get all kinds of people coming through.

We've got a couple regular wierdos. There's crazy Carol. She's obsessed with Peter Sellers and old movies, and she's written Sellers as her last name on her library card. She doesn't have a phone, she lives by herself and she is in the library every day, several times a day. Actually, she doesn't come into the library. It is her ghost that stalks the library. That's right, her ghost. Apparently, years ago, she was talking to the reference librarians when all of a sudden her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she hit the floor like a bunch of bricks. Emergency services was called and they had to give her one of those adrenaline shots right into her heart and she woke up, but she was technically "dead" for about three minutes. She says odd things to the staff and is severly lacking in the social graces department. My first day there, she walked by the counter and asked my supervisor if I'd been warned about her yet.

Then there's David, this older man, retired, who is very hard of hearing. He calls several times a day to talk to the reference librarians. Apparently, he watches the news with his hearing aid off. He half hears something and then calls in to have the librarians research it for him. He's always polite. When he comes in, he always borrows the desk phone to call a cab to come home. He ends up shouting into the phone because he can't hear the person on the other end.

There's a homeless man that comes in every day. He doesn't bother anyone, doesn't usually say anything to anyone. He just sits around, surfs the net, has some coffee, and then leaves when we make the closing announcement 15 minutes before we lock up. Rumor has it that he actually has a lot of money that his father left for him in a trust. He also has a lawyer (I did hear from someone that he is a lawyer), and I've heard that he's threatened to sue the library when people complained about his odor and someone from the staff approached him about trying to clean up some before he comes in.

But what prompted me to talk about wierdos at the library happened yesterday. We've got a couple of geeky patrons that come in fairly regularly, usually they come to me to check out their materials (like attracts like I guess). Well yesterday, there was an older man that was sitting in one of the chairs near the entrance and he appeared to be sleeping. One of my coworkers and I were discussing him, whether or not he was sleeping, and I suggested poking him with a stick. The more socially maladjusted of the two geeky guys came in and I was checking out his materials and he said something like "I could make a low frequency sound grenade for you, that would wake anyone up if they were sleeping." Trying very hard not to laugh in his face I said that we didn't need one and it really wasn't any big deal. He offered again, and I declined. Then he took whatever DVDs he was borrowing, Battlestar Galactica or something, and left.

Who knows what my next shift will bring.