The bright (er) side.

So our public library is the Atheneum, named after Athena, of course, the Greek goddess of wisdom and the arts (and a bunch of other stuff). Makes sense. It is a beautiful building on the outside and even more stunning on the inside. So stunning that letting a three year old run rampant is dicey at best. Oops-there goes the antique globe. Woops-the toupee of the mannequin newsreporter (yes, there is a mannequin newsreporter seated at his antique typewriter) is now between volumes II and III of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Clearly my child needed to be restrained.

The time came to check out a book, "Squids Will be Squids"-excellent and highly recommended. Much to my shagrin, I was told I needed to sign up for a library card; a reasonable request had I not been holding a cranky Tasmanian devil child who knew at that moment only that there was so much more destruction to undertake! She was already unhappy, so leaving the library without the book was out of the question. Surely I could take one minute and fill out a silly little form. Then I met him: Mr. Atheneum.

I quickly filled out the enrollment form and prepared to sign out the book. Not so fast. My daughter's kicking and yelling and pummeling ramped up a notch, but Mr. Atheneum was on the other side of the desk, with a bad case of nerdy tunnel vision. Here I was stuck between Scylla and Charybdis and by god, Charybdis was going to give me every tidbit of information on the Atheneum and its days and hours of operation, its lending policies, its featured periodicals, its website functionality and more, if it killed him, or me, which was far more likely. For fifteeen minutes this continued. Mr. Atheneum must have been deaf by the end, I know I was. He certainly seemed oblivious to the maelstrom in my arms.

We haven't been back in months.

The moral of the story: Don't take a child into a nerd's domain and expect either one to pay attention to your comfort level.