You're Perfect For Your Job

Yaaaay! Puppets!

Those days come when you don't think you can stand one more kid with an excuse why he should have more than a half an hour on the computer ("I'm just waitin' for the program at 6." "It's ten of, kid - go find a good seat.").  You look down the road and see two one-man puppet shows coming at you like a semi full of rubber chickens and you're the 'possum with her paw caught on some gum in the middle of the road.  Your idea of a whole month of storytimes centered around music and dance suddenly looms larger and more teeter-y than a pile of all the discarded encyclopedia sets in the country.  And your simile circuits have jumped the shark.

The idea of a Dr. Seuss storytime using the huge compilation book (instead of the individual stories, which are checked out, of course) that cost so much that it was made a non-circulating tome doesn't seem as clever as it did before you picked it up and held it all the way through The Cat In the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham (2 times) and you're doing it again tomorrow.  The flannelboard of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish got out of control and storytime seemed to have fallen short of the 30 minute mark. 

Later, just when you wonder how much longer you can do this job, a mom says, "I want a job like you have.  I've watched you for years and this job was just made for you.  I want a job that's perfect for me like that."

That's when you remember that this job is perfect for you.  Your liberal arts education (five foreign languages, only two of them dead, none fluent but at least the Spanish comes in handy now), years spent doing theatre, love of puppets and toys, arts and crafts background, not to mention years of watching Warner Brothers cartoons, have all prepared you to know a little bit about a lot of stuff, to love stories, and enjoy thinking up things to entertain kids.  If this isn't the most perfect job for me, I don't know what is.  I've done lots of other things: factory work, secretarial, paralegal, data entry - blah-blah, and while most of that has paid better, this has been the best fit.  It only remains for me to turn the concept around.

It's not just that this job is perfect for me, but I am perfect for this job.  There is no one else like me.  Others might be just as good at storytimes or crafts activities or redirecting children instead of just yelling at them (note to self: work on that one) - but when it comes to the whole package, with the shelving and 18 years experience of Dewey Decimal, ease with Webtimewaster 2.0, small office machine repair and maintenance ("Marf! Show me again how the laminate goes in the machine!") - No one can beat me.  I pwn this job. I am in your non-fiction section reading your shelves.  Don't mess with me.  I am perfect for this job.

Gosh, now I need a nap.  Only ten more years to retirement.  Sigh.

Don't Try This At Home

Raccoon puppet as planned

For Valentine's Day I used The kissing hand by Audrey Penn and looked for a take-home craft to go with it.  "Oh, cutting out a few pieces for some kids - how hard can that be?" I thought to myself.  I love cutting things out.  Gah!  Monday's group canceled which meant I only had my Tuesday group (not realizing that it was the larger one) and Wednesday's individual walk-ins.  I traced and cut out over 500 pieces (although my husband helped with some while waiting for his car to be serviced).  I sent 26 off on Tuesday and hoped I had enough for Wednesday.  I did - phew!  But Monday (and part of Tuesday) was a frantic cutting session, even tripling up the paper, collating all the pieces, putting them in baggies, and inserting them in the paper bags. 

But, you know, it was worth it to see the cute little raccoon puppets come out - eyes crossed, hearts put any-old-where!  The walk-ins had the option to take them home or use the glue sticks I'd put out.  One little boy wanted to take his home, but his mom said they didn't have any glue at home.  As an inveterate and unrepentant craftie, I can't imagine a house without glue!  We might be out of epoxy, E-3000, crazy glue, fabric-tac, white glue, glue stick, gorilla glue, wood glue, glue pen, etc. - but no glue?  No glue at all?  How do they fix things? 

Anyway, here are some pattern pieces, but plan ahead (unlike me) and have your volunteers cut them out.

Pattern pieces for the Kissing Hand/Raccoon puppet.

Backwards Day

Always check your books.  You may have read this book to children a hundred times, but there's bound to be something thrown in your path to make you stumble.
Milo's Hat Trick by Jon Agee was a favorite of mine for my storytimes about hats and when I looked it up to see if it was in, our branch's copy was no longer.  We had gone through a weeding jihad over the holidays and I guess that book had gotten a bit tatty.  I wish I'd known - I'd have asked to have it discarded to me to use in storytime.
Luckily, another branch had a copy and I put it on hold.  It arrived in time and I assembled all my materials: hats, flannelboard pieces, hand-out poem.

The first storytime was on January 31st, a day we were supposed to wear something backwards because it was National Backwards Day or something.  I put my name tag on backwards - something I might maintain as a habit.  The children filed in and sat on the dragon rug

Dragon rug apparently no longer available from Highsmith.

and I was scurrying around because I'd forgotten the cd with the Chicken Dance on it.  I toyed with the idea of starting with it (I usually finish with it) because it was Backwards Day after all, but decided to stick to the routine.  There's a reason I don't get them all worked up and then expect them to sit back down again and listen to a story.
After the opening song (If You're Happy And You Know It), I picked up Milo's Hat Trick and did my "The Author Writes the Book" song and opened the book.  Oh, look!  There's a dedication to Audrey!  I don't think that's the one that works here, ha ha ha.  And I tell them that if they write or illustrate a book they can put a dedication in the front to thank their mom or dad or teacher ... or that nice lady at the library who read them stories.  Then I had to turn out the neck of my shirt to show my name tag because I had it on backwards.
I turn the page and start reading.  At the fifth page I can see that it has skipped to the end!  I panic!  Has someone torn out all the pages?  I check and there don't seem to be any cut edges, but I can see more pages than there should be after the fifth page.
The pages were bound out of order!  I had to flip back and forth to keep the correct sequence.  Then I told them it was perfect for Backwards Day!
Today I sat down and stuck tiny post-it notes with numbers on them so I can tell the story in order today without getting lost and looking like a total idiot.
A word to the terminally lazy, like me: Always read the book before storytime, no matter how many times you've used it.