I have yet another story to add to the multitude that already exist regarding the treatment of children's libraries as daycares. We're not, people. We are not daycares. Libraries do not act in loco parentis (I learned that in grad school...impressed?)
Earlier today, there was a small child of about 3 or 4 years old running amok in the children's area (as they do). Normally I don't think much of it because first of all, it's pretty typical behavior, and second of all, many parents don't seem to notice it when their child starts acting like a sociopath because they are busy looking for the next DragonBall Z DVD in the series. Go figure. However, I noticed pretty quickly that this child was different because there did not seem to be any sort of parental unit or guardian checking out for him.
One of my co-workers walked over to this little boy and said "Ummm...where's your mama? Is she here?" The little boy responded, "she dropped me off." Immediately a red flag and fire engine sirens went off in my head. I was getting ready to call the police. However, he continued with, "my mama put me on the elevator and pressed the button and stayed downstairs." Whew! At least she was in the building! Apparantely there had been a miscommunication between parental units and both thought the other was upstairs with the little boy. No harm done. But there are many people who believe the librarians exist to babysit children. We entertain, we educate, we inform, we do other REALLY impressive things...but we don't babysit (at least at the library anyway).
Another thing I've noticed? I've started to put "y" at the end of many words, mostly nouns. The other day, I held up a vest to my sister and said, "do you want your vesty?" Yeah, I'm not sure what to think about that...
One last once:
There must be some sort of school project going on because I've had reference questions about Thailand, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bangladesh, and other countries that I probably spend at most 30 minutes a year thinking about. Bizarre!
1 comment:
How about sixteen year olds? Do you babysit them? Do you do hand checks every once and awhile? Do you permit gross PDA? Would you like to have a sixteen year old cousin for the weekend? :)
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