Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Miss Information is annoyed during her leisure time

Miss Information had a pretty sweet thing going. She would wile away the hours at work, spending lots of good quality time with the scary losers who hang around the library. There are a few nice normal people, too, but they're way out numbered. Anyway after a fun-packed day at work teaching adults to share and play nicely with others, she would make her way to the giant bookstore/coffee place a couple of off-ramps away from the library. There she would meet her library friends, decompress, drink coffee and complain loudly about having spent the day surrounded by adults who don't understand that other people need to use the computer too.

It was nice. Oh sure, sometimes she would run into other library staff because they are all pulled by some irresistible force to books and when the library is closed, well, they just have to make the best of things. And once in a while there was an awkward moment, like the time Miss Information didn't realize her manager's husband was sitting at the next table. While she's sure she didn't say anything negative about the manager, whom she likes, the words "decrepit, stinking hell-hole" may have been used. (She could have been talking about any decrepit stinking hell-hole, right?)

Recently, though, Miss Information has noticed a very bad trend. She had vented thoroughly about the day's events to her friends and gotten up to stretch her legs. She noticed the people around her. A couple of tables away was Mattie's Mom, a woman who thinks nothing of letting her 4 year-old son spend 7-8 hours a day using the Internet, while she studies at a nearby carrel. No sign of Mattie, though. Maybe she dropped him off at an Internet cafe on her way to the bookstore. There were other customers in the coffee shop as well: the Guy Who Turns Newspaper Pages Loudly, the Stammering Guy Who Stresses Over Printing, and the Baseball Obsessed Guy. Frankly it was unnerving.

It's like the second the library closes they all wandered over here to continue their hanging around. (Miss Information has a mental picture of them gimping along en masse, vacant stares, arms extended, muttering "Brains, brains" in growly monster voices.)

Still, Miss Information attempted another visit to the bookstore on the weekend accompanied by a non-library friend. While the friend waited in line, Miss Information went on a scouting mission for an empty table, which was hopeless because the coffee shop went wireless a while back and now nobody ever leaves. Like if you aren't drinking coffee you should go home or something. Oh, and Miss Information can see right through your clever display of a nearly empty cup and a few strategically placed cookie crumbs. You've been here for hours! That coffee has mould on it! Those cookie crumbs are covered with dust! Other people want to sit down, you bastards! Move along, already!

Well, anyway sitting at one of those tables, looking pretty much the same as she does during the 8 or so hours a day she spends at the library was "Bullet Proof Hair Woman". It was the last straw.

Miss Information dragged her friend out by the hair. They went to another coffee shop down the road where her friend complained bitterly about the quality of her non-fat, sugar-free vanilla latte. Miss Information felt sad for her friend, but knows in her heart that a substandard latte is a small price to pay for a peaceful cup of coffee without the distracting presence of the library zombies.

1 Comments:

At 10:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Because Miss Information is so informative, amusing, and, yes, sexy in a literary sort of way, she is to be forgiven for rendering the common idiom "while away" with an obscure reference to a famous cartoon coyote's first name.

I can only assume this was intentional, because Miss Information's perfection shines through every line.

 

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