Sunday, March 14, 2004

262 Child phobia learned in libraries

I read a number of blogs by librarians, and the experience of working in public libraries seems to make some of them either swear off ever being a parent or desire a child-free environment. Here's an example from The Well Dressed Librarian, a gay, Jewish, cataloguer-wannabe, who blogs about his experiences in library school where he has gone from being a fashion plate cataloguer for an auction house to a lowly page.
I have also come to another realization. I can not stand the sound of children whining or crying. Yesterday, Mother of the Year was in the library with all 5 of her kids. 3 of them were crying, and one was emitting this low, skin crawling whine that would not stop. I wanted to give the kids stickers to make them stop, but realized they were crying because their Mother was forcing them to play computer games that they didn't want to play.

She was making a 3 year old play a game with French and Spanish words. The kid couldn't even read, let alone two foreign tongues. I don't think from what I gathered that she could either. Finally, our very own Kentucky librarian came to the rescue. She explained to the MOTY that the games were too hard, and got them to play something else.

End of crying & whining. For 6 minutes.

Then the MOTY decided it was time to go, only the kids wanted to play more games. So she screamed at them. Then she couldn't find one of her kids. So, she decided to call for her, like she was in a State Park. Multiple times.

Finally they left, and I had one of the worst headaches I can remember. And I have a good memory.

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