My Lack of Learning Systems

So I’ve worked in a law library for the last four years, with varying degrees of success. It’s a pretty sweet deal most of the time. Good pay, fun coworkers, flexible hours. On the whole it rocks, but sometimes my unique luck and disposition have made for some rather ridiculous situations.

Take last week. I work nights these days, so basically I shelve a couple of books and then work at the front desk the rest of the time. Occasionally we have a special project for the night. Last week, the special project was moving around several honkin’ piles of boxes from one basement room to another. Since there were way too many for me to transport by myself, one of my coworkers made me a nice deal: if I would clear the space in basement during his dinner break, we would go down there together when he got back to do all the heavy lifting.

A little back-story on the basement: It freaks the bejesus out of me. It’s dark and creepy, with loud florescent lights and ancient library related paraphernalia littering the corners. So sometimes I need a little distraction to take my mind off the horror that is the basement, whilst I’m down there. On this particular night, my distraction of choice was Britney Spears’ latest adventure in recorded music, In the Zone.

And while I’m listening to said CD, sometimes I tend to sing along. I mean, who could it hurt, right? The basement is locked to everyone except staff and the only staff around nights is me, Desk Guy (who can’t leave it unmanned) and Guy Who’s Out at Dinner. Thus, thinking I’d be all alone in my very own basement of good acoustics, I began rocking out proper to the inherently catchy beats of a blonde pop star. Now, I might not have the best singing voice in the world, but I can surely get into a song well enough. And when you add in the dance moves, it’s truly a sight to behold. Not that anyone should.

And yet.

So I move a particularly large stack of books over to their proper place deep in the back west stacks. Continuing to sing along, as I have been doing for the last, I don’t know, 7 minutes or so. I sort of do this half spin/hop/fist pump move out of the stacks to head back out of the basement - - - And run into Guy-Who-Most-Definitely-Should-be-at-Dinner-Right-Now. He’s sort of collapsed against the wall, laughing very, very hard.

Sometimes you just have these moments in life where it would be very helpful to have some sort of invisibility device, or perhaps a nice hole in the Earth to fall into and never return. This was such a moment. Alas, no hole appeared. In the end, he was very complimentary about the whole performance. Once he caught his breath again, that is.

What makes this story all the more horrible is that it wasn’t the first time that this sort of thing had happened. Only back then it involved with a reference librarian, two students, and the Chicago soundtrack. Back then, I made a solemn promise to myself never again would I do something so embarrassing. It’s good to see how well these sort of things work out. Cripes.

But anyway, stay tuned for an entire week of The Continuing Misadventures of Jason in the Law Library. I’ll post as many as I can. Because there are tons. Sadly enough. Sigh.