Cafe Hitch-hike

2004-02-22

Hazards of a librarian

I've got no fare to ride a train
I'm nearly drowning in the pouring rain
Hitchin' a ride
Hitchin' a ride
Gotta get me home
by my baby's side
ride-ride-ride, Hitchin' a ride...
ride-ride-ride, Hitchin' a ride...

Agh, I guess I love that song again. And, reminicent thoughts of Bill dot my mind when I'm alone. Agh, it's just 'cause he looked just like George Clooney, and there are a few other things that make him stand out from my roster of former male friends. Hahahah....
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I was working yesterday at the pub.lib. My day of interest began when a lady my age, someone I could easily imagine being a former middle or high-school classmate of mine, asks:

"Do you have any books on potty training?"

She has three small kids in tow. Her buddy, another early thirty-something chick, also had a couple of little kids. Both women were dressed similarly. Maybe they were in the same sorority and planned to have their kids at the same time, in the spirit of sorority cohesiveness?

Me: "Yes, we do. I can take you to where they will be."

"Well, Dr. Phil wrote a book on potty training. Do you have that book?"

(Christ, what hadn't that man not written about? He's written a diet book. What next, a book on what to do with yeast infections?)

I take her to the potty-training section, and she calls her youngest kid, "C'mon, Elliott." It was a wide-eyed little girl. Her buddy follows. "Madison, come here," she says to hers.

I snickered inside. What ever happened to names like Amanda, Jennifer, Trisha? What's up with these kinds of names? They sound like street names in New York City. Along with Taylor, Brooklyn, Tristan, Broadway.

I joked to my friend that I'd name my girl Tomassa, a friend of my grandma's. Hahah. No, I like Hannah, or a name of one of my former students, Amanda Grace.

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I'm ordering books and a description of one is this:

A young, Scottish lad is an outsider in his Corkey community. He gets a job as a dishwasher in a nearby restaurant, where he discovers the love of a classmate. He blossoms from awkward to passionate from her love. He then makes it his goal to satisfy every guest he meets, male or female, and then moves to London where he proceeds to do the same. A tale of redemption and passion.

The actual description was pretty steamy and I laughed outloud when I read it. I read this after reading all the trashy, tawdry romance novel summaries. Picture scenarios like these:

It's Civil War, and Abigail Stowe is torn between the love of her Northern sweetheart and the Rebel who ignites cannon-firing passion.

It's 1790 in Liverpool and young Marjorie Still is the love slave of her cruel industrialist boss, Roderick Steele.

It's Arizona in 1703 and Misty Germaine, a French-Canadian orphan is an indentured servant for the missionary and Mrs. Graham Appleton, and discovers pleasures of flesh from Spanish land baron Flavio Manteca-Perez-Rodriguez-Llores de la Virgen.

This is what I get for volunteering for the fiction selection committee! My eyes glazed over after the fifth or so said summary. However, the tale of bisexual Scottish love of an outcast-cum-mutherfuckin' Don Juan added a little curl to my black eyelashes. I don't get off on that kind of stuff, but...

The pleasure is mine when I know the selection committee will think I'm a freak for requesting this. They may say it will never get checked out, but I disagree. I say it will circulate. The bored housewifes such as the mothers of Madison and Elliot and Tristen and Manhattan will like these books. Maybe their husbands will enjoy them, too, hahaha. After all, don't most libraries need to get books that would interest men???

Also, my speciality in the fiction committee is multicultural fiction. This was written by an author by Scotland, so doesn't this qualify??

Hell, it's not like we don't have erotic fiction in our collection. I also heard there was a previous librarian who ordered heavy quanities of lesbian vampire horror, and nobody told her she couldn't order those.

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Ah, so why don't I do that? Why don't I supplement my librarian income with writing those types of novels? I just got ideas for three credible novels, for goodness sakes (ay, nobody take these ideas, they belong to me and they written on my own PC!) If I run out of my own ideas, I can just recall the ones I've heard about here and there. Porn Star video, the local non-conglomerate owned video store, owns lots of crappy porn that I can scratch for ideas. I dunno.... Why not????

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