The Adventures of Monkey Boy

Most of the time, one of the biggest reasons I enjoy my job is due to my interaction with the children that come to the library. For example, one of my favorite things is when I'm working in the bomb room, and a little kid will pull back the flaps covering the book drop and peek through to see where it is exactly that the books go. If I'm working back there and I see them, I'll usually smile and say hello. Sometimes they'll say hi back, or ask where the books go, but most of the time, the flaps drop back really quickly when they realize they've been caught peeking into what I assume they think of as a hidden, top-secret place.

The other day I got to show a little girl and her younger brother how to use their library cards to check out their books, they were so adorable and so excited, and another little boy got excited when I brought him a Batman book. Little kids' excitement over books is awesome to me and I love to see kids who are genuinely interested in reading. Like I said, it's these kids I enjoy and make me enjoy my job.

So that brings me to The Adventures of Monkey Boy. MB was probably about 3 years old. He came in one afternoon with a guy who's a regular at the library (the type of regular who comes in just about every day to use our computers). I have a feeling he had gotten roped into babysitting for this afternoon and wasn't really into it. So he comes in, and lets MB loose in the children's section while he sits at a computer somewhat nearby, but still pretty much out of sight of the majority of the children's section.

I was shelving books, and he was just kind of moseying around, being a kid, looking at books, etc. He was pretty cute and tame, so I didn't really have a problem keeping an eye on him. So I continued on shelving. A while later, I noticed he had sort of latched himself onto a family that was visiting. The mother had brought in her son and daughter, and was trying to sit the two of them down with her at a table for some reading time. Instead, MB was engaging the son, getting him to run around with him and climb on the furniture. I looked over and noticed the mom getting a tad exasperated, but she was still doing her best to keep her children to themselves.

Then MB decided that books = footballs. To prove this was so, he started picking books off the shelves and drop-kicking them. I glanced over at his "babysitter," who was sitting oblivious at his computer, then hurried over to MB and told him that we didn't treat books the way he was treating them. By this time, the mom was looking particularly annoyed, so I went to B (one of my supervisors) and told him what was going on. He came over and just watched for a bit to witness MB misbehavior himself, and when he started climbing on a chair, to the point that he was on the back of it, he went and got Mr. Oblivious, who took him back over to the computer where he was.

Mom was grateful, and the children's section was peaceful again.

Until a few minutes later when I looked over at the self-check in the children's section. MB had grabbed the bottle of hand sanitizer, and proceeded to use about half of it in 2 minutes. His hands were the cleanest little kid hands in the library, I'm sure, and about half of the counter and card reader was probably extra-sanitized, too, from the amount of hand sanitizer he had managed to get everywhere. I went to B again and told him what had happened (a/n: the reason I go to B instead of directly taking care of the kid myself is that that was what I had been told to do in the case of misbehaving children... let someone higher up than me take care of it). He came over to the station and cleaned up and spoke to MO again, who brought MB back to his computer, again.

I went back to shelving. And of course, MB reappeared, and started running through the children's section, and then decided that the the baskets for books (like the handheld one in the grocery store) are for sitting, standing, and jumping in. By this time, I think B and I were just like whatever, and he eventually tired himself out and passed out under the computer of MO an hour or so later.

But like I said. Kids are one of the reasons I love my job.