Miss Information is annoyed by a contestant
The competition for the library’s annual Mother of the Year contest promises to be intense in 2007. Last year’s winner is a woman who spends hours playing Neopets on the Internet while ignoring her 3 year old daughter. This is some skill as the child spends her time preparing for a career in death defiance. Her areas of specialization are “precarious balancing on rickety furniture” and “eating the inedible”. Once in a while MOTY looks up from her game, screams at the child to “stop that!” and becomes immersed in her online world for another hour or 5.Miss Information fears that as skilled as the current champion is, she may be in danger of losing her title to a feisty new competitor. This phenom made her first appearance at the library on January 2. She asked Miss Information to help her find the address of a man. She had his name, a couple of phone numbers that may or may not be his, and a vague notion of his location. Miss Information doesn’t usually ask why people need the information they need. In situations like this she doesn’t ask in case the answer is “because I’m stalking him”.
At any rate, Miss Information is unable to locate the man’s address. Does the customer know anything else about the guy? She knows where he works, but the office is closed for holidays. Miss Information is out of ideas. The woman is disappointed.
“Oh,” she says. “I really need to find him because he’s got my kids and I want them back.”
Huh? The voice in Miss Information’s head is telling her to just walk away, but does she listen? Nope. She has to ask. She stammers out something like "what's he doing with your kids?" It seems the woman became ill about a week ago and as the ambulance was taking her to the emergency room, she got this guy to take her kids. She doesn’t really know him. She doesn’t know his home phone number. They don’t have any mutual friends she can contact. She’s always depended on the kindness of strangers, or something. Besides, people are so nice during the holidays.
This seems like pretty shoddy parenting to Miss Information but she refrains from awarding the Mother of the Year trophy right then and there. It will be hard to top this but the new year has just started and who knows what sterling candidates might present themselves in the next 363 days.
7 Comments:
Poor Shaquina!
Poor Shaquina!
There ought to be some variant of the Darwin Awards for this. Surely knocking yourself out of the gene pool before procreating is not that different from knocking yourself and your recent spawn out at the same time.
That is so wrong on so many levels. I think it deserves more than just the regular Darwin Award. There's got to be something like a Presidential/Imperial Something Medal of Boneheaded Motherhood for her.
Dear Miss Information, who selects the winners for the contest? Is it decided by librarians?
Those of us who work with the public tend to choose our own winners as not all of us are annoyed by the same things/people. Someone who might be "The Patron Most Likely to Morph into a Creature from Horror Flick" for me could be a walk in the park for someone else. So much boils down to personality.
Having said all that, defining categories for awards can be great fun: Best Excuse for Being Late, Best Jaw-Dropping Question, Worst Smelling (body odour division), Worst Smelling (foul breath division), Strangest Attire We've Seen All Year, Best Shoes--the list goes on.
I usually love your entries, but this one was really disturbing. Did you call the police or provide a phone so that the woman could contact authorities to find this man and her children? If you didn't shame on you.
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