Boys will be boys

I've had a most excellent day today with my two grandsons, Nathan and Connor! It actually started last night with popcorn, Harry Potter, and a sleepover and continued into today with breakfast at Chick-fil-A, playtime at Monkey Joe's, toy shopping at Target, and the 3-D version of the movie "Monsters v. Aliens." We capped it off with some time at the park in Fayetteville followed by snacks and Bug Juice at the gas station store.

I think they had a really good time, but they couldn't possibly have enjoyed it more than I did. I had forgotten how much I miss dirty sweat socks, grubby hands, and giggling over phrases like "I could eat an ELEPHANT," and "Who farted?" At some point during the time we spent in the car, the conversation turned to GameBoys and what kind of games their Daddy played when he was a little boy. That got me thinking...

We traveled a LOT when my boys, Bryan and Benjamin, were little. With Dad in the Navy, it was not only inevitable, but expected. One of my favorite trips was a visit to England in the fall of 1986. We were living in southern Spain at the time, and at $10 a ticket, we couldn't resist hopping a MAC (Military Air Command) flight from Madrid to Mildenhall (by way of Aviano, Italy and Ramstein, Germany). It was a long flight in a cargo plane that I've mostly forgotten except for one memory. The Air Force crew flying the plane were some of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. Mindful of these three little kids they had on board, they were kind enough to invite Annike and Bryan up to the cockpit to watch as we made our nighttime flight over the English Channel (I don't remember if BJ made it up there or not--he may have been asleep at the time). Anyway, Bryan happened to take his brand new GameBoy up to the cockpit with him and the flight crew were fascinated with it. I wasn't in on the conversation, but somehow they talked Bryan into letting them borrow it and I think they put the plane on autopilot for the next hour or so while they had a go at Doctor Mario or whatever game Bryan had with him at the time!

We landed safely at Mildenhall and spent the next couple of weeks driving the length and breadth of England, Scotland, and Wales. It was a terrific trip (and the impetus for finally potty-training BJ!). After almost three weeks of stuffing five people and a massive sack of "nappies" in a car the size of a Mini-Cooper, Randy had had enough. The minute we got back home to Spain, BJ was out of diapers. But that's another story!

Suffice it to say, I can't begin to express how much I miss those days that I thought would make me nuts at the time! Here are a few pictures taken during that trip.

Thank GOODNESS boys will be boys!

Beware of falling fruit

The girls and I were hiking in beautiful Waimea Valley during our January trip to Hawaii when I spotted this sign. Naturally, my first thought was "oooh, this would make SUCH an excellent blog post title!" I've been waiting ever since for fate to hand me a day to match. It was today.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I work in the archives of the Atlanta History Center, smack dab in the middle of the most posh neighborhood in Atlanta. We are free and open to the public but thanks to our location, we are generally (and mercifully) free from the, shall we say, interesting patrons that find their way into many public libraries. Our patrons almost exclusively fall into one of four categories: a) elderly folks researching their family histories, b) students of all ages conducting historic research, c) absent minded professors intent on getting their next book published, and d) spouses and domestic partners of those in categories a through c that get dragged along for the ride.

I guess I need to add a new category, coined by one of my co-workers, for the woman who visited us today: Wackadoodles. We wondered if she really belonged with us when she floated to the reference desk, signed in using a made-up patron number and the name "Fatima," and proceeded directly to the computers. My co-worker walked over and asked her if he could help. She said, yes, would he bring her a cup of coffee? When he explained that we allow no food or drink, she sort of sniffed as if she'd suddenly found herself seated in a sub-par restaurant, and turned her attention back to the computer. For the next several hours, we watched as she intently surfed the internet, filled out online applications and printed dozens of real estate listings while alternately mumbling to herself, wadding up paper balls and tossing them across the table, and making odd gestures at the computer screen with her hands.

Now, I should probably point out that mumbling to oneself and making odd gestures at the computer screen is behavior that we frequently see from a lot of our patrons--in fact, it's behavior we occasionally indulge in ourselves. I think it's part and parcel with being a history geek. This woman was not a history geek. At one point, when I walked past her, I noticed that she was most definitely not conducting historic research on the net. The hot pink logo on the screen (in the shape of a bunny's head) gave it away. People may read Playboy for the articles, but I doubt they have much to do with history.

It wasn't until she started walking laps around the Reading Room and pulling books from the shelves to stack them in odd piles on the tables that we finally decided it was time for Fatima to leave. After security escorted her off the property, we found that when she wasn't with us, she had been alternately scattering papers around the atrium of our building and trying to clean the bathrooms. She left what looked like a hypodermic needle in the ladies room--further investigation determined that it did not contain a needle and that she had apparently been using it to whiten her teeth (when she wasn't cleaning the bathrooms and surfing porn sites on our computers, that is).

So. I guess it's to be expected that while working with the public you're occasionally going to stumble upon a nut or two. I could write a book about some of the wacky people we deal with on the phone and via e-mail. But this is the first up-close-and-personal experience I've had and I have to admit it was a tad unsettling. I felt sorry for her. Maybe she just has a cell phone with AT&T...