Some Nonsensical Ramblings
20 February 2003-7:12 p.m.
Affrin is an amazing product. I can breathe again. This is a godsend. That's all that's newsworthy in my life today. I paid bills, went to work, ate dinner, and here I am, still at work. I dream of one day having a job where I never have to work nights, or weekends. I also discovered that I enjoy office-y type jobs. Most of what I did today was photocopying, mailing lists. Since I have nothing exciting happening today here's some fun patron stories.
We help an extraordinary number of early childhood education majors. I'm sure some of them are very intelligent people. These are not the ones we see. My favorite question so far this school year has been for books "about imagination?" So we went on a hunt. If you ask me any book with talking animals in it seems to be awfully imaginary, but that's beside the point. I found many a good book, but most were rejected, not because they weren't imaginary enough. One was all about "what if..." and had things like fish for leaves. But not once in these books was the word "imagination" used. *nods head in knowing way* can't fool these kids, if it doesn't have that word somewhere in the text must not be about that. *sigh*
My other favorite was yesterday, as I was getting ready to go. Two girls on a mission. They needed "stuff" about Dr Seuss. "What kind of 'stuff'?" "oh like, journals? well anything?, we have to have two sources?, and one? needs to be from the internet? or a journal?, just not a book?" That upwards vocal inflection that makes people sound as if they are asking a question with every statement drives me nuts.
I find "stuff" and despite their announcement that "anything" is fine, they are not satisfied. "What do you need?" they had left the assignment at home. "What makes it literature?, something with Dr. Seuss but using like, literary terms? Like discussing it?"
Huh?
"Do you want reviews of his books? Or a critical analysis?"
"Oh those sound good! So they tell you why it's literature? You know we really don't know what she wants. But if we can take in something maybe we can ask her about it?"
I go to Galileo and do a search for full text articles or Dr Seuss. They say they have done this and found nothing. I get over one hundred things. Now granted, a lot of them seem to have to do with movies or Seussical the musical, but not all of them. I went through a few, but these girls obviously expected me to look at each one with them. Finally I sent them away with instructions to go upstairs and look this up. Read the articles and my favorite copout, ask the reference librarian.
I love sending all my crazies up to the reference desk. Boy do they have stories to tell.
They have regulars. One of the best is a lady who'll call and demand information on how Marilyn Monroe was kidnapped by the Japanese and that's why pearl harbor happened and because Kennedy loved her we went to war and got her back. Throw in some random tangents and Princess Di and Russia and the Queen Mother, and you have a normal phone conversation. This stems from the fact that she has seen a picture of a woman who looks like Marilyn Monroe's mother in a kimono. Yep. Bet you didn't know about that little history factoid.