CityLink Short Bus rolls into action at the Central Library

A confused looking woman approached me and asked for "Tony the Tiger." On DVD. "Wasn't that just a television commercial?" I politely queried. "For Frosted Flakes cereal?" She mumbled something in reply then added, "Ain't that still on TV?" I haven't seen a Tony the Tiger ad since the '70s. Perhaps Criterion will come out with a special edition DVD celebrating Tony's legacy some day? Maybe this woman will provide audio commentary. Until then...

Before that a lady came in complaining that she just had her "lieberry card" in her hand but lost it because she "really had to go to the bathroom bad." I suggested she check the bathroom for it or go to our lost and found, but that was too obvious a resolution and she chose instead to repeat her woes. She found her license and I looked her up - her last name was Jones and she seemed surprised that there was more than one Jones in Baltimore (guess she's never heard of O's center fielder Adam Jones).

I told her that if she showed me ID, I could look her card and PIN number up. She proceeded to use the top of our printer as a dumping tray for everything in her pockets, including her debit card. "I wouldn't use that to sort through your cards" I advised her. "You don't want to lose your credit cards in our printer." Her response was: "I'm NOT a bum!" OK, then.

"I didn't say you were, ma'am," I replied, flummoxed by this out-of-left-field assertion. "I'm just trying to help you out and don't want you to lose your credit card [parenthetical thought: since you already lost your library card!]."

She repeated, "I'm not a bum."

Whoa!...Or as Don Rickles used to say when encountering hecklers: "How did the crowd get out of control?"

I asked her to verify her phone number from a displayed list and she said "I have so many I can't be sure." Hmmm. I turned the screen around to let her pick a phone number and wrote down the card and PIN number for her. She headed off to use the computers but came back two minutes later complaining that she couldn't log on using the information I gave her - that she gave me, in turn. I sent Mrs. Jones down to the circulation desk, explaining that they could check her card to make sure it was working. I looked up her record again and it said she was a "delinquent" user, so maybe this was all just a cat-and-mouse waste of time to try to game the system and get around fines. I know: don't judge. I can be so cynical. (It's called "experience.")

Then I was mid-conversation with another patron when an old guy came up in a huff and blurted out, "Oh man, I messed myself up good in the bathroom. It all over the seat. You got a newspaper or something I can lay over the toilet seat?"

I have to admit I lost my train of through for a moment before I could stammer, "Um, no. I don't have any newspaper handy to clean up your mess." Had I more time to think, I would have grabbed this week's CITY PAPER. I can't think of a better way to use Baltimore's "alternative weekly."

I let the facilities guy know there was "a mess" in the men's bathroom. He was less than delighted.

Right then, another patron walked by and said, "Just to let you know, somebody DESTROYED the handicap stall in the men's room." I should have gone down to take a picture. I'd like to compare it to the toilet scene in TRAINSPOTTING. Or WETLANDS.

A few minutes later, the facilities guy came back and gave me a (colon) blow-by-blow description of THE BIG MESS (which is NOT a long-lost hard-boiled personal hygiene novel by Raymond Chandler). "Next time, Tom, I'm gonna leave a mop and bucket with you and you can have the patrons clean up their mess!"






Not a problem. I want to be a facilitator. Librarians...we can be heroes!