A few little anecdotes from library land:
A kid came into the library wanting a book on robots. I asked if he wanted a book about real robots or stories about robots. He said he wanted real robots. I took him to the spot and showed him what we had. One of the books had a fair number of pictures, with some robots on the cover that were used by NASA and looked semi human. The other book that was checked in only had a few pictures. The boy immediately rejected the book with the NASA robots. He said, "That's not a robot book, that's an astronaut book!" He was very upset already. The second book didn't have any human looking robots in it. They were all Detroit robots and roombas and things like that. He was getting very agitated, "No, this isn't what I want!" I said, "Do you want a book where the robots look kinda like people?" He said he did, he wanted the books that look like people with square heads. His dad was with him, so I kinda talked to the dad and told him that the books on real robots didn't really have things like that. I told him we might have some stories with that kind of robot. The dad said he thought that's what his son wanted. I brought the boy to the stories with robots that have squareheads. The boy freaked out, "No, these are cartoons! I want the real robots! The books on real robots with squareheads!" I told the dad that we used to have books that showed robots like that as the future, but those books were all really old so we got rid of them. The dad turned to the son and said, "They don't have them! Those books are old! Come on lets go!" The kid was freaking out. "No, no, I don't want to go! I want the robot books! The robot books." The boy looked at me, and I saw in his tiny little eyes absolute hatred.
We got a report about an old lady yelling at people in the parking lot. She was saying things like, "I know you're watching me." She came into the library and stood by the front door, looking out, like she was waiting for a ride. I was with another supervisor and we were trying to watch her, since she was acting erratic. We stepped away for a moment, and when we came back she was gone. It took us a moment to locate her again, she had moved out into the parking lot. She was looking into a parked car. She walked past the car and looked out at the road, then came back to the car and got into it. She very slowly began to pull out of her spot. She was looking all around like a car was about to drive past, but there weren't any other cars around. Very slowly she pulled out and drove a little, then stopped. Very slowly she started again, then stopped again. Finally she made it to the edge of the parking lot, then, all the sudden, peeled out, speeding down the road.
A few days later she came back. One of my employees was sitting in her car. The woman walked all around her car, checked her license plate, looked at her, and started yelling at her. My employee stayed in her car until the woman ran off toward the senior center.
I might write more, but it's time for me to go to work, so those are your library stories for today.
