Life as a library page

I started working in libraries in my junior year of high school as a library page. Typically, library pages re-shelve returned books, but I was lucky enough to have a job that only required me to sit at the checkout desk and check people out as they left the building. This was of course before the days of self checkout (and the Internet)! It was a sweet job - I just sat there working on my homework or reading books from 5-9 pm, stopping every now and then to check someone out. It wasn't demanding, it wasn't hard - a perfect part-time job for a book lovin' couch potato like myself.

One evening, though, things got a little weird. I was sitting at the checkout desk (which was all the way over on the other side of the room from any other public service station so I was essentially by myself most of the time), minding my own business, when a tall, sort of crazy-looking man came up to me. He didn't say a word but reared back and hokked a loogie directly at my face. It landed right over my left eyebrow. He immediately rushed out the door and I never saw him again. It's hard to react quickly when someone spits on you, and unfortunately, just moments after this incident, an elderly couple came up to check out, so I had to sit there with this guy's spit sort of pooled there over my eye and pretend there was nothing wrong. Once they left, of course, I was able to clean it off, but it was way too late to have any chance at all of finding the guy who did it. It shook me up and grossed me out but I'm not easily scared off so I kept coming to work as usual. I don't remember whether I even told my boss about it or not - it was so long ago.

You would think that an incident like that would sort of sour me on the library profession but in fact, I found the whole thing very interesting. It did give me my first taste (not literally - yuck!) of the kinds of things that can happen in a public library. You just never know what to expect.

In fact, that's one of the things I LIKE about this setting. It's seldom boring - weird stuff happens all the time and we spend hours talking about the craziness. Makes life interesting. :-)