Me, and also me

 

Surely I've told this story before, but there should be a provision for how many times I think of a story in relation to how many times I tell it. Like, if every once in a while I think of a story (and "story" in this context is a little grandiose, let's call it a trifling anecdote), but have already told said anecdote to you here, then probably I should be able to contain myself and maybe never tell that story again. But what if I think of the anecdote eleven times a week, every week? Maybe in that case, after eight years or so, I should get to tell the anecdote again, albeit with a long justifying preamble.

I think so.

To set the stage: 

One can return items from other library systems to my library. We take books from other libraries all across the greater metro area systems, put a slip in the book that identifies the system, and ship it to an agency that disperses the item to the appropriate system. It is mildly irritating to have a dozen books come in on the automated machine that the machine cannot recognize, and to have to take those items out of our exception bin, put a marked slip in every one of the items, and put those all in a red box we have along our "outgoing materials" wall. But it's all part of the game.

Which brings me to the Me, also Me.

Me, when 20 kids books that belong to another system come rolling through our check-in machine:

"Why can't these fucking people return their fucking books where they got them!"

Me, when a library patron asks "Can I return my Washington County library book to your library". ":

"Absolutely! Any time. No problem. You can return any item from any one of the public libraries in the metro area to us, and we'll send it back to the library it came from."