A note on surviving the weirdos from another planet

This post isn't about library patrons, but about the kinds of weird people the library attracts. One of my co-workers told me that there used to be a foot fetishist who came to the library who would crawl around under the study carrels and touch women's unshod feet. Pretty creepy. And then there was a woman who liked to urinate on the floor between the shelves of a particular book collection. Someone saw her and asked what she was doing. Sadly, these freaks appeared long before my time. But new and equally interesting people still find their way to my workplace, it's just a matter of being at the right place at the right time. And for one brief moment a couple of weeks ago, I was.

I was sitting at the circulation desk with my supervisor, and we were chatting in between helping patrons. Suddenly, I started feeling really anxious just as this odd-looking character came through the door. He was quite short and stalky, with bleached hair and pronounced facial features. He walked up to where my supervisor was sitting and plunked down a cerlox-bound booklet, with a bright yellow cover, on the counter in front of her. She looked at it without saying a word, and the weirdo said, "here you go. There's an ISBN number on it", implying that the booklet be catalogued and shelved. He left right after, and I was so relieved. There was just something 'off' about this guy. I asked my supervisor if she had ever been given a book by someone off the street before, and she said no. She wanted to toss it out, and I asked to keep it. The title is, "Have You Taken your Meds?..Today!".

I've tried to read some of the poems in the book, but they really don't make much sense. Let's just say they could use a lot of editing, some clarification of the author's thoughts, and perhaps removal of the hand-written editing, including little notes the author had written to himself about the poems and their publication. On the cover he claims the poems are "notes on surviving", and I assume he means surviving psychiatric treatment. They must have done something really scary to this guy to cause him to produce the kind of nonsensical stuff he has written. I think the doodle on the cover of the oval-shaped alien head and antennae, with his first initials and surname inserted where the eyes should be, tells us where his mind is, and perhaps where he hopes to be going.

Next, please.