Boa constrictor swallows goat. Details at ten.

The air is heavy and humid, and I don't like very much. Tomorrow I'm going back to work to wrangle again the boa constrictor that is our pandemic library circulation system, and the goat that it swallowed. 

Close your eyes and imagine a very, very large snake. This snake is the normal library circulation system.  About as many items check out on any day as are returned, so the snake looks like a snoozing garden hose.

Along comes a pandemic, trippity-tropping across the bridge like a Billy Goat Gruff. Library patrons, bless them, rush to check out everything they can carry.

We will visualize that large amount of checked-out library materials as a goat. 

That goat is being swallowed whole by the snake like a classic episode of Mutual of Omaha' s Wild Kingdom when a giant anaconda almost eliminates the host, Marlin Perkins. 

The snake will not need to hunt for food for many months or years. The goat is a massive blumpfh in the circulation system. The library staff still has to prepare for the eventual glut of returning books, movies, and audiobooks.

My job, strange as it sounds, is managing the goat. I go inside the snake to manipulate due dates and renewals so the staff doesn't find the entire goat in the book drop some morning soon. I've taken to wearing a khaki outfit complete with pith helmet. This may be the high point of my entire library career. Oh, heck, oh heck, I'm up to my neck.

  © 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder

Squirrels in the kitchen numbering one to twenty

At Eastridge Elementary we had perfect oblong pieces of lined paper especially for spelling tests. The spelling paper had a certain smell. If you say to me, "Print your name on your paper and number from one to twenty," I can smell the spelling paper and the pencil graphite.

From the very beginning I loved everything about spelling tests. I loved sitting up straight in my desk that smelled slightly of Comet cleanser. loved the teacher pacing around the room leaving just enough time between calling out words for us to write them  in print or cursive. Seeing the letters in such fine arrangements of correctness was as satisfying as a time-lapse film of a rose blooming.

The spelling test may be my earliest understanding of "form."  This concept boggled my mind as a college art major, and yet I knew it when I saw it in second grade. The pieces, the letters danced themselves into a perfectly logical, complete, and correct oneness that made my little heart glow warm. Spelling, rhyming, indenting, punctuating to the aromas of mopped beige linoleum tile and dripping overshoes in the cloak room.

And so this problem presented. The horns of a  matter learned or mislearned or hallucinated. B.A. Paris has a new book out, The Dilemma. How embarrassing it must be for the author and publisher that the title is incorrectly spelled on the jacket. Or NOT!

The horns of the dilem-NAH. It's Greek, surely. A root word we will need on the SAT, Shirley. Probably the minotaur leading Theseus in two dark tunnels of the labyrinth. Alas, according to my big old red beloved American Heritage dictionary there's no N in dilemma, and Ariadne is left rewinding her thread.

Say the word. Use the word in a sentence. Repeat the word. Pause.

I will never forget the first two words I missed on a spelling test. It was a devastating blow to my self concept. Not perfect after all. Squirrels. Kitchen.

© 2013-2020 Nancy L. Ruder