love, honor, charity or for the sake of humanity.
I smell a Nobel Prize in Literature
from The Fat Librarian
Joanne did a good job of accepting others, and that’s impressive considering the cross-section she saw daily. You start with the homeless and the crazies, usually one as a result of the other. Many kids are without a parent at home after school were homeless in their own right, and just as needy for Joanne’s acceptance. Some patrons walked in and Joanne could either smell or even see the feces on them—people with no dignity left, whether they lost it with their sanity or to drink. Some people, like Andy Riecz, only checked out horror films and other R-Rated material, but Joanne tried to just smile and hope for the best, imagining that she had a librarian-patron understanding that banned her from discussing what individuals chose to check out.
One couple, Cullen and Savannah, tended to check out Lovecraft and Poe, as well as vampire films, but Joanne didn’t assume they were pretending to be vampires. She was too big, figuratively, to think that about others. She even saw Chadwick, known as Chigger, after she knew from rumors and rumors of rumors that he had been enrolled in the witness protection program. Did she tell anyone? Not a chance!
Now, had Cullen or Savannah tried to suck blood from the neck of another patron, Joanne had a keychain bottle of pepper spray she was itching to use, and she knew it was as effective on mere mortals as garlic spray on real vampires. Had Chigger been packing heat, Joanne had her dialing finger ready to call security. Had Andy started bothering middle school girls, Joanne was fully prepared to break him like the twig of a man he was. Sometimes, just before closing time, she thought she saw a handsome man, dressed in black, walk past her without her remembering, but she figured that was not really possible, even if it had happened over a dozen times....
