Alone and Unobserved

I volunteered at the “Great Salt Lake Book Festival” at the Salt Lake Main Library last weekend, and I had a pretty good time. I was there for about four hours, and for the first fifty minutes or so I didn’t have anything to do, so I just wandered around and checked out cute boys. (There were many, and many were probably also gay.) When they finally gave me a job, it was twofold–a stretch, but I was able to handle it. First, I was in charge of directing adults to a hidden conference room where Jana Richman was presenting her book on being a feminist ex-Mormon motorcyclist. The adults I encountered were either old, crazy, or just irritable, and most of them wanted to know why they couldn’t walk through a glass wall and a bank of glass elevators to get to Conference Room A directly from the children’s library. (A valid question, especially since you could see Conference Room A through the glass, taunting you with its nearness and inaccessibility.) Their irritability only increased when I told them that Conference Room A (and indeed Conference Rooms B, C and D) were only accessible from the atrium outside the library proper, and that they would have to go back up the stairs/elevator they had just come down, exit the library, and try again at a different, and hopefully more correct, elevator and/or staircase.
Far more interesting was my second responsibility, which involved directing young children and their retinues (i.e., parents and older siblings) to the various Harry-Potter-themed activities taking place in the children’s library. Accordingly, I positioned myself at the bottom of the staircase in front of the children’s library entrance and stopped each bewildered family to inform them of all the wonderful things that were going on. (Aside: Many of the families that came along seemed surprised, and sometimes positively taken aback, at all the festive festival merriment going on, and I can only assume that they were of that dying breed of family that goes to the library every week, even when there aren’t any Harry-Potter-themed activities scheduled.) “Right here,” I would gush, gesturing to my right, “we have the Sorting; over there”–a gesture to the left–”is Wand-making, which is on-going, and there’s a Potions class starting in just five minutes!”
I took a break in the middle of the day to see Serenity for the second time and eat something unhealthy. (Taco Time, I think. I have yet to find something at that place that I actually like. I should stop trying.) When I got back in the late afternoon, I was assigned to babysit the line of people who were waiting to hear noted author and television personality Jim Lehrer give a talk on his latest book. Before last Saturday, I had no idea who Jim Lehrer was, and even now I still couldn’t tell you anything pertinent about him. But I can identify him on sight, because I have seen him up close. (Whether that is cool or not I am not prepared to judge.) Many of his fans were older, crazy, and had ADHD. They were apparently also cheapskates, because they all decided to wait in line for his free talk instead of buying his book and having him sign it. It wasn’t that they didn’t know their hero was sitting all alone at a table in the browsing library; they could see him through the glass wall just fine, and we announced the book signing at regular intervals to new arrivals. They just didn’t want to pay any money, and possibly lose their place in the line.
Anyway, it was fun, and then it ended. That’s how most things are, really.