Frankenstein Facepalm

Category: dribblings

So the week before Halloween a lady comes in the ‘brary, a grown-up, adult lady, my age, and she says to me, she says, “I need a book about Frankenstein.”

That’s it. No, “Hi!”
No, “Good morning!”
No, “Can you help me?”
Nothing. Just a demand. A stupid, unclear demand.

“I need a book about Frankenstein.”

“Okay. So you want literary criticism on it?”

“What?”

“You said you wanted a book about Frankenstein. So you don’t want the real-deal, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you want something that discusses Frankenstein?”

“I just need, like, a Frankenstein book.”

“So you want the original Frankenstein book?”

“I don’t know?”

“Well what kind of-”

“I just need something with a Frankenstein in it.”

“Um. Do you… do you need a kid’s book? Or something with a picture of a Frankenstein monster in it?”

“No.”

At this point I’m dying on the vine. I mean, she doesn’t want the original, she doesn’t want lit crit, she doesn’t seem to want a kid’s book, what does she want? AND WHY CAN’T SHE ASK FOR SOMETHING MORE SPECIFIC THAN, “I NEED SOMETHING WITH A FRANKENSTEIN IN IT.”

My coworker, bless her, butts in and says, “Here, I’ve done a search for Frankenstein on the OPAC, why don’t you look at what we have and see if you can find something?”
So she starts to scroll through the search returns and is all, “There! What about that one?”
We look and she’s pointing to a children’s book called Frankenstein Looses a Tooth.

I got the book for her and then went to the break room and slit my throat with a pretzel and my own disappointment in the human race. We seem to have lots of pretzels in the break room lately.

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