Vocabulary Building

1. We have an older gentleman who comes to the library several times a week to "research" baseball. And by that, I mean he makes a lot of photocopies of baseball cards along with the statistics on the back. I think, from now on, I shall call him the Commissioner. Yeah. A typical visit from the Commissioner has me basically making the copies for him (because he cannot remember how to do it himself), looking for pictures on Google Images, or attempting to explain to him that I can't just magically look up any obituary on the planet. Well, I guess I could... but perhaps for a more worthy cause? *Aside: Am I too jaded this early in my career?* Anyway, today I had the Google Images search results page up. I kept printing out the pictures he liked, but he seemed dissatisfied. Finally, I realized that he wanted me to print out the entire results page -- yes, the tiny thumbnail sized pictures that repeat themselves or are just completely not related to your search. I printed it and he seemed fairly happy about it. Then he said proudly, "I be 84 on my next birfday, and I ain't on no medications." And then he walked off while laughing rather maniacally.

2. Do you know what a psychopomp is? I sure do. I think I would do a poor job of explaining it, so here's the Wikipedia version: "Psychopomps are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife." I can't believe I've spent my 26 years on this earth not knowing that.... Anyway, some guy wanted to know if we had a book about psychopomps. Guess what? We don't. I looked for things related, and couldn't really find much. This, of course, is my subject area, so I guess I'll have to see about it in the future.

3. A man who looked like Bob Marley walked over to the reference desk. He asked, "mmmmm mmmm mmmmm mmmmmmmmm?" Or at least, that's what it sounded like to me -- he mumbled worse than I've ever heard. Eventually, I figured out that he wanted information on Wing Chun. Well, we had several things on Kung Fu, but nothing on Wing Chun specifically. I told the guy about ILL, and showed him some books I found on WorldCat. He ordered one and left. While walking away, he mumbled something to his wife about building a dummy. Holy crap! I asked him a million times what he wanted to know about Wing Chun! Did he ever say anything about the wooden dummy? NO. Good grief -- I could have just printed out some instructions from the internet for building a Wing Chun dummy. How annoying. His loss, I suppose.