Wednesday, March 28, 2007

yet another reason not to trust priests

you would think that it would be statistically impossible to encounter so many crazy people with such regularity ... but apparently it isn't.

this guy walks up to me at the information desk, he's in his early fifties, seems like he has it together. he needs to get on an appointment for the computer, says he's "technologically challenged." i ask him for his library card, and when i look him up it turns out that he has $75 worth of fines.
i alert him of this, and then he begins what i can only assume will be a long tale of woe and misery which is supposed to make me waive his fines. but oh no, it's so much better than that.
"i've been a bad boy," he says.
"yes you have," i say, wondering if all men have an i-want-to-be-punished-by-a-hot-librarian fetish or if i just attract them.
"you see," he goes on, "i got myself into some trouble about ten years back ..."
here we go.
"you see," he says, showing me a photo ID card from some detention facility. "what i used to do is, i used to dress up as a priest, see? and i would go into banks and rob 'em."
at this point i say something terribly clever like "uh-huh."
"i did that like, oh i don't know, maybe twelve times or something like that. but eventually i got caught so i've been locked up for the past decade. so i don't know how to use the computer."
"o-kay ... well i can help you get onto the computer but you still owe $75."
"oh yeah," he says, "i know, i just need some help logging onto my e-mail first. i was hanging out with my nephew the other day, he's a teenager, and he set me up with the e-mail."
and that, dear readers, is how i helped a convicted bank robber access his e-mail. but the real lesson here is that this man, a felon and a thief, is willing to pay his library fines if you just help him logon to yahoo.

1 comment:

Ed said...

Michelle,
Don't you realize that the new way to rob banks is electronically? He may have told you that he's checking e-mail but he probably paid his fine by wiring money out of someone else's account. There's a good chance you might have been aiding and abetting a convicted bank robber.
There goes the good name of another librarian.
E