The Mouth-Breather

We call her that for obvious reasons. When your mommy and daddy have relatives in common, something happens in the embryonic stage that prevents the offspring from developing proper nasal breathing passages. You can hear an inbred coming if you listen for the mouth-breathing.

She asked one of the youth librarians for "another book catalog."

A what? Like, an online public access computer? A card catalog? And "another" one? Where did the first one come from?

After much snotty explaining on her part, she managed to inform the librarian that she sought a second list on which to document the books she's read to her kids for the reading club. (Our supposition is that someone else is doing the reading, unless picture books count.)

The poor youth librarian didn't have her Mouth-Breather to English dictionary handy. There was no hope for understanding without translation.

Then the woman somehow found her way to the adult area, where she and her son stood in an aisle I needed to get into. In fact, it was the aisle that leads to my office, and her son was pounding his little fists hard against the glass of my office door.

She did nothing.

I said, "Excuse me, I have to get in there." I was hoping she'd move herself, her kid and the stroller with her baby away from the entrance to my door, but all she did instead was instruct the boy to get out of the way. She didn't budge an inch.

This forced me to squeeze between her and the wall while stretching my arm sideways to unlock the door, but I still wasn't able to get into the office because of the stroller.

She still did nothing.

She left me with no other recourse. I had to move her baby in the stroller myself.

She still did nothing.

After I managed to squirm into my office, I began closing the door as I stared with loathing at the back of Mouth-Breather's head. She turned around and I paused for a fraction of a second and thought to erase the look on my face as our eyes met, just before the door touched the frame, but I decided against it. She deserved to know just how much of an ass I thought she was.

She still did nothing.

Fast forward three days and she returned with her two children.

The boy is about four years old and I learned his name today, not because he told me, but because Mouth-Breather shouted it so often that it sounded like a broken record echoing in my skull.

Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah!

JONAH!

Jonah! Jonah!

Jonah-Jonah-Jonah-Jonah-Jonah!

Jonah, another mouth-breather, clearly suffers from ADHD, and possibly a little bit of a hearing impairment because nothing anyone said to him seemed to penetrate his childish ears.

He was on his way up to the third tier of an empty bookshelf as he ascended what must have been the kiddie version of a rock-climbing wall, before one of my coworkers stopped him.

It went something like this.

Coworker runs to save Jonah's life.

Mouth-Breather does nothing.

Coworker puts her hands on Jonah so that he doesn't let go of the shelves and plummet to the ground.

Mouth-Breather shouts, "Jonah!"

Coworker says to the boy, "Jonah, you cannot climb the shelves in the library. Feet are better off on the ground, where you cannot hurt yourself as much."

Mouth-Breather, who can see the entire event unfold, shouts, "Jonah! If you don't get over here, I'm leaving without you."

Coworker eases Jonah off the shelves.

Mouth-Breather, now looking at me, shouts, "Jonah!"

Coworker watches as Jonah runs off to join his mother 10 feet away.

Mouth-Breather shouts, "Jonah! That's it. We're leaving!"

No apology. No discipline. Nothing.

From the looks of it, she's pregnant again, too.

Who knew her own brother would be available to procreate three separate times with her?

Then again, I imagine mouth-breathers don't get to do much kissing. They'd pass out.