Get Cooking and Get Out of the Way
People do not know what they need but will scream at you to give them what they want.
Always been that way, people fighting needs and wants in their hearts. Folks will not eat to buy a new phone. Wear thick sweaters in the summer because someone on TV did it. Kill their neighbor because of a fence neither of them built.
Then there's ding dongs that walk around thinking "public servant" means "personal whipping post." Today's ding dong is named Bethany. Bethany came into the library on a tear wanting all our cookbooks.
Not all the books on the "fun summer grilling" list.
Not all the "Cake or Death" cookbooks.
Not all our Carribean Bisque Dessert cookbooks.
All our cookbooks.
We are nothing if not accommodating in the library. We offered her enough to fill the checkout limit, about fifty books.
Not good enough.
We offered to fill an assortment of books for her, put the rest on hold.
No way, she had been online and seen all 1,981 cookbooks. She had printed out that list at RentaCopy. She wanted all those books.
So she got them.
The director asked Bethany to pull around to the side of the building. Park just under the big window, the one the Johnson kid had thrown a ping pong ball through last Christmas. Same one bats like to crash into on cold nights.
Then all the staff got together and began hurling cookbooks out the window onto Bethany's 2011 Chevy Malibu. The gold paint buckled and flaked off as Gordon Ramsay and Chef Paul and Crazy Potato Larry slammed into the plastic and metal. Glass shattered. The antennae was bent.
Bethany screamed from inside the car. For a while. As the last of the 1,981 cookbooks fell, the staff stopped laughing. We looked onto the lawn.
"Who wants burritos?" the director asked.
We all did.