When I was a first year teacher I worked with at a school whose librarian was somewhat of an odd bird. I think it's possible that Shelly suffered from a little loneliness due to the amount of time she spent alone in the library. She was one of these people where if you got locked into a conversation with her, you weren't going anywhere for a while, which of course made people further avoid her.
About midway through the year she came to my door while I was teaching and asked if she could talk to me in the hallway. This had never happened so I figured this was likely something fairly important.
"I just I'd let you know that Robert Palmer died."
I paused and cycled my mind for a second while Shelly stood there staring at me. "Do you mean Robert Plant Shelly? The guy from Led Zeppelin?"
"No. Robert Palmer." She repeated.
"The Addicted To Love guy?" She nodded. "Shelly, why the hell would I possibly care about that? I'm teaching here!" I'd never had one conversation with this woman about Robert Palmer, music, or anything else of the sort. With no disrespect to Mr. Palmer's legacy, I hardly felt his passing after a decade of general irrelevance was interruption worthy (hell, Robert Plant dying could wait till a passing period...). That marked the last classroom visit I received from the librarian.
No comments:
Post a Comment