One of those days

Punk Goes Acoustic 2











[A great album, acoustic versions of songs are second only to good covers.  But now back to our regularly schedule commentary... truth? Fiction? What's what?  You can vote at the end.]

“We think there’s an incendiary device on the playground.” The tall man before me was saying.


“Oh.” I answered. His words were not really a surprise.




He entered the Library ten minutes before to ask everyone to move their car from the parking lot. I had been on my way out the door. On time, for a change, it was 4:30 of a long day. He’d walked up to the desk asking about the cars. ‘Who owns the blue one? The black one?”


How would we know? Of course, we’d asked what was up. At that point, he said the fire department was at the playground 800 yards away. Hmmm. 4:30, Wednesday, school vacation… what could the fire department be doing? They needed to clear the parking lot…. Fireman games? I think not.


I forced my hand out in front of him and introduced myself. A manipulative move I admit. Hold your hand out to some one and they are forced either to acknowledge you and make the personnel connection or ignore you and clearly be a jerk, opening themselves up for legitmated anger, indignation and so forth. The man took my hand.

Of course, it’s hard identifying yourself as the one in charge when you’re dressed as a pirate. On the other hand, half of us were dressed like pirates. Today was pirate day.

So, with a skull bandana wrapped around my head and my scarf around my waist, my pirate tattoos and my severed head earrings, I went with the nice volunteer fireman to ask everyone to move their car. No one questioned this.


“So, can you tell me what’s going?” I asked after everyone had gone to move their car and he and I were basically alone. Thus by that point, his answer wasn’t really a surprise. I had kind of figured.

I suppose I wasn’t surprised either because it’d been that kind of a day. And then, there is of course, that this is my life.


The Damn Cat Jack, had kept me up since 4:00 am, again. The food bowl was empty. At 7, when we gave him food, he didn’t eat any. He had licked, tugged, chewed, etc. because he wanted food in the bowl, not that he was hungry.


We tried a new place for breakfast, it tasted fine, but the service was a little lacking. They also seemed to have a problem understanding toast was on the menu. M and I had words, not because we disagreed on the issue, but because we disagreed about how we had last discussed the issue and what that meant and should mean. Between the two, I was running late to work.


I got there on time. Which for me, is late. Then I needed to pirate-ify. We were short staffed this morning. But two lady pirates who were told by multiple three year olds that we weren’t scary held our own.


By noon, twenty under 5 had heard three pirate stories, colored pirate self portraits and had gotten their pictures taken. 200 items had been retrieved and scanned and about half as many more scanned and sent on their way.


That would have been a full day. But it wasn’t.


Still to come was a two hour discussion with the treasurer (some of that time on hold) as my numbers on a particular account disagreed with the book keeper’s numbers on said account by $71.34. When I finally explained to truly find this discrepancy would require taking literally hundreds of invoice from the past year for amounts ranging from two dollars plus change to twenty dollars plus change that we all agree total more than three thousand dollars and going through each one … and then the error might not be there, but carried over from the past or on the income side … We decided to adjust.


Then there was the onslaught of the next round of Pirate Jrs. This time it was pirates under 12 years of age filling our building to color telescopes, color parrots that were clipped to clothespins and clipped mostly to shoulders, boat crafts and more! And there were the adults… you’d think they’d never seen two short women dressed as pirates before. Really, how many times does this need to be explained when you have thirty little ones running around in pirate masks?


So at 4:30, I was ready to go home, not help clear the parking lot. But… clear the parking lot we did and as I was heading in to call home and say I wasn’t going to make it for dinner, the fireman returned.

“We’re all set. You can park in the lot.” He called to me.


I met him across the yard to inquire and verify. Yup, turns out the item in question was not a bomb, but a bong.

I made it home for dinner and tell my tale. M with a perfectly straight face looked at me and said, “And did you tell the fireman it’s okay, you can’t spell either?”