Last Day of Freedom?

Shortly after we opened and just as I was settling in for my first hour on the circ desk, we were disturbed by the excited rumble of a patron tugging purposefully at the heavy locked portal on the parking lot side of the library which is clearly marked “Please Use Other Door.” This is not an uncommon occurrence. It is a double door and one side is always locked (hence the signage) although I did note the rather extended interval between the first thunderous vibration of the unmovable door and the eventual opening of the accessible one immediately to its left. Through the strenuously won breach shuffled a disoriented but obviously determined woman who mumbled a few lines to herself as she slid toward me. “I need to pay my bill,” she offered meaning, of course, that she had an outstanding library fine which she wanted to resolve. Our patrons are so often employing the language of commerce (and debt) to describe their use of the public library that I have ceased to note the strangeness of it. I presented her with the figure in question, which was $12.00, and she presented me with a $100.00 bill. My quiet and near apologetic explanation of our inability to wipe out our register set her on a second round of bizarre behavior. She began speaking, partially to me and partially to herself, on at least three subjects at once. The monologue went something like, “Is that a bank across the street? Is the bank open? I gotta get a job. All the jobs is on the internet. Is that door.. is the bank open? That door…” here she nodded toward the door on the street side of the building; another double door with a similar half-locked configuration to its sister opening on the parking lot side and which bears a similar sign which the woman stopped in mid-sentence to read aloud thusly, “… Please Use Other Door. Is that door open? I’m going to the bank.” With that, she shuffled to the door and pushed vigorously on the locked side a few times before successfully opening the other and making her exit.

When she was outside, I glanced over at MP and asked her, a bit surprised at my own exasperation, “Why does everybody have to be crazy?” I’ll spare you the details of the story this comment elicited from her except that it involved a man who once unloaded his bowels on her front lawn because he, “was feeling really sick.” Instead I’ll just point out that as she related this incident to me, I could watch, through the window behind her, the progress of a man in an electric wheelchair on his way up the middle of the busy six lane street which fronts our building. Yes, he was going against traffic. I kind of gave up on the day at that point.

Which was just as well since all I really had to look forward to after that was the arrival of our shipment of this year’s One Book One New Orleans selection, Rising Tide The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 And How It Changed America by John M. Barry. OBONO, by the way, has its own discussion weblog this year. Also a guy in the tech lab today kept calling me “chief.” Oh and it turns out that I am a fugitive from justice. No, really. On my way home from work today I casually remembered that this was the day I was supposed to appear in traffic court to pay my fine for that goddamn stop sign that I didn’t run back in November. I guess tomorrow we’ll find out how seriously they take contempt of court in New Orleans. If you don’t hear from me for a while it’s because I’m in prison.