Run. As Fast As You Can.

Today there was some sort of cosmic conspiracy that resulted in huge amounts of interference from forces greater than me, coming together to create a shift at the reference desk that will go down in history as Freak Fest, 2008.

Aside from the fax machine having repeated strokes and refusing to do its job, computers were freezing into a white screen more frequently than I could get to them for a reboot. Eventually I just announced to our patrons that if their computer froze, they could hard boot them down on their own. Files weren’t accessible one second, and then they were. Some documents successfully made it to the network printers while others were lost in oblivion. Fortunately, the patrons did not rise up and decide to lynch me; they felt sorry for me and did their best to try to fix their own problems.

Like I said, this was not a normal day.

One man tried to use the scanner on his library card’s barcode, but he thought he had to run the scanner up the length of the barcode. When this didn’t work, he tried it slower and faster, assuming that it was the speed he was moving the scanner up the card and not that he was somehow misusing the scanner. I was never aware that a red, horizontal laser line that appears under a scanner would present a situation too complicated to figure out where the barcode should go. You have no idea how many people try to feed their card into the floppy drive of the computer. If they can’t figure this out, I don’t think they should be using our computers.

Another man approached me with an open bag of potato chips, and as I asked him how I could help him, he shoveled a handful of potato chips into his mouth. I fully expected him to chew his mouthful before asking me his question, but this was not to be the case. Through shards of potato chips, he mumbled his question, which was computer related, so I followed him to his computer, with the hopes that he’d swallow the food in his mouth and then be able to communicate with me properly. When we arrived at his computer, he sat down in the seat. He put his finger up to indicate that he needed a moment, then proceeded to scoop another fistful of chips into his mouth. With his mouth full again, he began mumbling about wanting to know how to control the volume. I was so irritated that I didn’t want to stand there and wait for him to finish chewing before I issued instructions to him. I told him to use the mouse to click here to find the slider that controls the volume, and that’s when I realized his hand was full of crumbs. He made no attempt to wipe his hand off and immediately began mousing. There was nothing I could say. I turned around and walked away, disgusted.

A woman approached my desk, and I tried not to stare at her, but it was nearly impossible. She’d pulled all her hair from the back, sides and top of her head into a ponytail where her bangs are. Her hair was actually short and thick, so you could see how most of the back of her hair had fallen throughout the day, but the top and sides remained as a bushy fountain spewing like a unicorn horn out of the center of the top of her head. How do you not stare at that?

She had her husband’s resume that needed to be faxed to a business. The resume was wrinkled, dirty and had a grease stain on it, which might or might not translate through the fax. I said nothing about the condition of the paper, but I silently wondered if all this debris and chemicals feeding through the fax would somehow damage it.

As the fax was progressing, I turned to the patron and said it was going through just fine.

She responded, “I hope I get my period.”

Is this a reference question? How am I supposed to respond to this?

I kind of looked around, then back at her, and drawled out an “okaaaaaaaaaay” that ran me out of breath before I blinked again.

She continued, “I’m late. And I’m really bloated.”

I blinked a few times and then I offered up the only thing I could think to say, something to the effect that the fax would take a few minutes to transmit, and she could come back to see me in about five minutes to receive her confirmation.

She said, “I need to pee. Again. I pee a lot.”

Again I blinked. Quite a bit. Suddenly the ponytail coming out the top of her head wasn’t the weirdest thing about her.

What’s really bizarre is that there didn’t seem to be retardation or anything cognitively wrong with her, but as someone I know likes to describe a person who gives out way too much information to complete strangers, this woman was socially promiscuous.

That’s right: she was a verbal whore.

With a bad hair-do.

Perhaps that was her freak flag flying high.

Maybe I’m the idiot because I didn’t recognize all the warning signs and run.

Whatever is going on in the universe that’s making the freakiest of people flock to me, I hope it subsides very soon. If this is a month-long, some-planet is in my house of some-zodiac-sign, or whatever phase of the moon we’re in that will last until the next one, I’m going to have to drive to the middle of nowhere so that I can avoid the freaky people for the rest of this cycle.