The Number One Reason Why Working in a Public Place Sucks

Okay. Okay. I am not going to freak out or run away.

This is what is happening right now.

The guy who was horrible. The one at the gas station? He just brought his kids into the library.

The first thing he did was compliment my appearance. Politely, this time, but it doesn't matter, because I know what he's really thinking.

So now his kids are on the computer. And guess what?

I'm alone down here.

Sigh. Mercifully, the piece of work just took his crying child outside and left the other one with the wife/girlfriend who I'll bet has no clue that he did what he did the other day. Or she does and is cool with it. Like that woman who's husband/fiance/baby-daddy likes to check out random girls and ask them out in front of her, the one the upstairs people always tell me about! Is he Baseball-Cap Guy?

Oh, God.

So my theory that he's unemployed is looking pretty accurate, right now. Although I guess he could work nights. But how could he and his kids mom both work nights without problems? Because she's down here now.

But here's the big thing. When he walked in here, with those kids, it triggered a memory:

It is summer. A guy (the guy) walks in with his kids and asks if they can use the computer, which I say they may.

Then he goes off about how horrible our director was to him upstairs, calling him for everything, and I have to tell him not to use that kind of language in the Children's Room. Then he apologized.

And that was when he told me I was pretty, in front of the lady who is/was/may someday be his live-in girlfriend/fiance/wife.

Maybe this is they guy from upstairs they keep telling me about. The guy who asks them out in front of whoever-she-is! Maybe it is!

If I don't make it home today, it's because he knows where I work on top of knowing what kind of car I drive.

If I don't make it home today, it's because the family had a Fun Day involving sadism and my mutilation/corpse disposal. Oh, God.

Please make him be "normal" for the next twenty minutes!

Okay. I'm freaking out. This was not the way I wanted to wake up this morning. This was not the way. No. It wasn't.

Dear Lord.

Jennifer, why does this kind of crap happen to me? I don't know why this is a question I ask you, or why I think you might have the answer.

Am I cursed? Anyone can answer that one. Seriously. This is so not the kind of thing that would happen to Paul. Or anybody else, for that matter.

Is it?

I'm freaked. Fully freaked. When will they leave? I can't ask them to, they're being nice and quiet and all that, and I can't very well kick the kids out for something their dad did to someone who he didn't know--I know he didn't recognize me. Probably because this is the first time he's looked at my face.

Calming down. He didn't recognize me. He would have recognized me. He would have. And he was brazen enough to speak out before; he would have mentioned it now, unless he knew I would have called our director down here and hid behind him while he sent that guy packing. Our director can be loud, when he wants to be.

I will survive this. I will pretend that they are not here. I will type furiously on this keyboard and pretend that they are gone, far away from me. Far away. Like, on another planet. I will forget that he is yelling at his just-talking kid because he doesn't know how to play the computer game yet, and is asking for help.

I will pretend that this day is still boring, or at least normal.

Ten minutes left.

I'm taking bets. Will I make it? Will I?

Dear, dear Lord.

I got the book my dad wanted. I went upstairs earlier and now it is sitting next to me. The book is red. But not read. Ha, ha! Get it? So funny....except for all the other stuff that's happening. That isn't, and the book thing wasn't enough of a distraction.

It wasn't, and it isn't. But I have to play normal, because if I don't and he puts two and two together, he will remember the incident and will connect me with the gas station. Doing that, he will then know where I work, the car I drive, etc.

And he could be a murderer.

He really could.

Anyone could be. I watch television.

Fine, he's not. But that doesn't mean he won't become one at some point. Anyone can become a murderer. And if he's as unbalanced as I think he is while I'm stuck in a room with him, well, then he's well on his way, right?

No.

Maybe.

Blast.

Seven minutes until Nancy gets here. Seven minutes. Soon she will come through the door, maybe with her blue umbrella with the happy faces on it, holding books, perhaps, and she will say, "Hello Laura," or "Good Morning, Laura," like she does every time she comes in when I'm already here.

It will be normal, an average meeting the likes of which happen every day around here.

THANK GOD. Our director, who I previously thought was in the building apparently wasn't after all. But now he is. Now he is, and if I have to run screaming up the stairs I can, even though I know I won't. If freaky stuff goes down, I will call upstairs and have our director come down.

This will be difficult for me, as I want as much distance as possible between me and this thing an objective onlooker would call a "man". But I would do it because this is my turf.

Four minutes.

I can make it. Together, you and I, we will make it through all of this, and later on in the--three minutes--day, you will read this and say, "Darn, Laura, that was some freaky stuff you had to live through last week and now today."

And I will say something like, "You're dead right," and I will be all serious because it hasn't had time to become funny or even--two minutes--not weird or gross just to think about.

It will get to that place, if he stops coming in here. It will get to the place where I can say, "Whatever, that was a long time ago," and not freak out. Like I am now.

One minute.

And what if Nancy doesn't get here on time? Sometimes people have to put gas in their gas tanks and stuff. Sometimes dogs are sick on rugs (does Nancy have a dog?) and people have to stay home and clean it up before they leave for work.

Speaking of dogs, I brushed Darcy last night and now she's all fluffy and pretty. You wouldn't have known how not-fluffy she was before then. She looked fluffy. But it was not her full fluff-potential.

Okay, Nancy is officially a minute late. Late for work while I have a serial killer, or at least an obsessive type personality with a rage--she's here!

I'm free!

See you later, folks. I lived. Thanks for the moral support.