This is Peggy. She works at a library. She smiles.
We librarians smile a lot. We're taught to. We're supposed to be friendly and welcoming, no matter what you crazy patrons do. Although we disapprove of you (yes, even you), we never, ever show it.
At librarians' professional conferences, we informally share crazy patron stories. And now Peggy Goforth of the Madison County Public Library in North Carolina has one to top them all. From the Citizen-Times newspaper:
“Another patron kept noticing the bag and she told us she was going to have to leave because a man’s got a bag with a snake in it,” the library’s interim director and administrative manager. The woman, Goforth remembered, spoke in the singular. “She said, ‘A snake.’”
There was not a singular snake, but, in fact, plural snakes. Many plural snakes:
After approaching the card-carrying library patron, Goforth asked him about the bag. “He said, ‘My pets are harmless. Here, let me show you.’ And he poured them all out on the front desk. They just wriggled everywhere.” [...]
"He probably had a dozen snakes in that bag. They were all different kinds. He had pythons and boas and he was just very proud of his snakes. He had to pick each one up, tell me their names and how long he had them. It was almost like listening to a person talk about their children.”
A dozen snakes.
Dumped right on Peggy's service desk.
This is not the first time that the library staff has told a patron to remove their pets from the library. Or even the first snake:
Goforth said another man with a snake wrapped around his arm had been asked by staff to leave on multiple occasions. After walking back into the library, still with the snake on his arm, he tried to claim his pet was a "seeing-eye snake."
"I just looked at him," Goforth deadpanned. "He looked at me and said, 'I don't think that'll fly, will it.' And I said, 'I don't think so.' He said, "Well, I guess I should take my seeing eye snake back outside."
Anyway, after so many pets have entered the library, Library Director Peggy Goforth asked that the County Board of Commissioners change the rules to prohibit seeing-eye snakes and the like from entering:
Under the new rules, only service dogs “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability” are allowed inside Madison County libraries. The policy specifically states that all other animal species are excluded, including animals used for “emotional support, well-being, comfort or companionship.”
Although I've never been caught bringing a snake into a library, a rule was created at a library that I worked at as a result of my actions.
-via Dave Barry | Photo: Paul Moon/The News-Record & Sentinel
Comments (11)
One especially lazy co-worker would literally sleep through his shift on a library couch. I was disgusted by his slothful unwillingness to contribute to what little had to be done. So, one night, I just let him sleep and closed the library at the appropriate time.
He awoke at midnight and realized that he was inside the locked and presumably alarm-set library. So he called the campus security force to let him out.
Although my boss never mentioned it to me, the next week, he posted a rule saying that workers had to wake sleeping co-workers before closing the library.
At the rate we're going and the luck we've had TTC, I'll be 50 before we have kids..... sigh
Of course this is a largely unconscious realization earned through a life-time of suffering ego-driven disasters.
I see no issue with having children when you are older, in fact I see it as an advantage. The parent is usually more secure in their life and know what they want and where they are at in their life. It seems that they have thought out the consequences of becoming a parent more so than a younger one might have.
Lots of funerals during my teenage years.
Of course all the old people died - as a kid, I was allowed to become attached to grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, and of course none of them lived to see me graduate high school.
But also there were "early" deaths - people don't expect to die in their 40s and 50s, but it happens.
A lot.
My memories are clouded by grief. I see my grandfather smiling in photographs and I simply can't remember him except as he was after he lost his wife and his sisters. I remember lots of grief. I missed all the good times - I see in the photographs that there were good times, but they waited until they were through living to have me join them.
It makes me angry because I remember having this huge family when I was a kid - I remember crowded Thanksgiving dinners, and I simply can't reconcile this with not having anyone left alive to invite to my wedding.
I'm sure you could get mostly the same study results by looking at 20 something mom's from families with old school money.
There's numerous reasons nature makes it hard to juice up a 45+ year old ovum.
My father was retired from his job by the time that I was in second grade. It seemed as though they had more time to spend with me. During most of my life, both of my parents were accessible at home to take me to sports games or other after school activities. At times, I think that they were rather overprotective.
It made some things harder. They weren't quite able to go outside and play with me much. I do remember my mom coming out and building snowmen with me and trying to play catch with me for softball.
I do remember attending a few funerals as a small child,, as there were a good number of older relatives in my family. I think that I was introduced to my first funeral before I was in kindergarten. I was only able to meet my maternal grandmother as all of my other grandparents had passed away before I came along.
I was somewhat young when I lost my parents. I was 25 when my mother (71) passed away and my father (86) passed away when I was 28. I would have loved to have had them around for a bit longer. They were at least able to see me graduate from high school, but I missed having them at my college graduation (I went to college late because I was looking after my parents for a bit) in 2007 and my wedding in 2010. Plenty of people talk of the dead "being there in spirit," but that's cold comfort and just not the same.