New year, same Methadone Man
posted Wednesday, 4 January 2006
He was in last night. He's in most nights now, whoopee. He was sitting at an OPAC and his head kept getting closer and closer and closer to the keyboard. Just as I was about to say something, he woke up and a few minutes later came over to tell me that he accidentally pressed M a bunch of times, was there a quick way to get rid of them? So I went over and discovered that in the seach box he did indeed have a long line of m's. Of course, when you fall asleep on the keyboard, you're bound to press something. I pointed out that this happened because he was asleep and he said he was awake now and leaving soon. I then had to show him twice how to highlight and delete the row of letters. His "soon" was about another hour and a half. In that time he:
- asked me where the pencil sharpener was, roamed around and finally had to ask again, including "Maybe I'm just dumb" in his query (well, yes, you are, but that's probably because you have about half a functioning brain cell left)
- asked me where classical poetry was
- sat at the coffee table by the newspapers for ages, slumped so far forward it was almost touching the ground
- he woke up and started moving around just as I asked the guard to kick him out, he then engaged the guard in conversation, presumably about his guarding job - at one point he asked if they gave him a car
- just as I thought he was finally leaving, he rooted through the booksale but when he went to pay for his magazines, the circ clerk that he wanted to deal with was busy (with a woman who took about 20 minutes and 2 staff members to sort out) so he left his stuff at the circ desk and...
- sat at a table for *ages* and wrote an epic note to Fawn on our comment card pad - turned out he'd given her a sweater for her toddler son and he was hoping that it fit and if it didn't he hoped she'd give it to a fellow "librarian" (part of the reason we're stuck with him is that Fawn has always encouraged him to think they're friends by chatting and giving him old clothes and stuff)
- he finally was able to pay the circ girl he wanted to talk to for the magazines (I'm pretty sure he snuck a booksale book into his bag, but couldn't be sure) and as he was leaving told her several times that one day soon we'd be seeing his book in the library.
Yeah, I'll be looking forward to that - Incoherent Ramblings of a Drug Addict, perhaps? Although it would probably be a hit at our branch. I noticed today that almost all of our YA nonfiction about drugs, especially heroin and cocaine, have been stolen over the past couple of years.