I was at the Reference and Research Library doing some referencing and research, and what do you know if I didn't turn the knob on the microfilm printer just a little too hard to the right -- or was it to the left? -- when snap! Who could know that that enormous multi-million dollar machine would have any parts on it that my tiny hand could harm? Not me, that's for sure, although I was careful to cover up my mishap when I asked for help because, really, that might have been my wrist clicking or someone's overly loud watch or even a dancing fetishist tapping a little too loudly in his shoes and not the little dial after all. I mean, a person wouldn't want to jump to any hasty conclusions, would she? That's practically tantamount to lying, and what kind of mother would I be if I condoned that sort of thing? While it's true that I didn't actually see anyone dancing, I would bet you two chocolate bars and a bag of chips (which reminds me of that joke about the priest and the altar boy, although in that story it was a bag of chips and a Pepsi and they weren't in a library) that almost everyone in that room wore a watch except me.
And anyway, this clicking occurrence happened after I was unable to properly thread the film through the windy (long i) machinery and adjust the millimeter (or whatever those numbers were) setting and decide whether I was to hit the P or not. In fact, I still don't know what the P stands for, and I still haven't decided (although everyone else in the room seemed to know, but heaven's to Betsy, most of them -- not all mind you, but most of them -- looked no older than thirteen, and we all know that kids nowadays can do anything), and furthermore I can't remember which one (the P or the non-P, if there even was a non-P) I was supposed to hit (either/or...), all I know is that pushing one button made the print dark and not pushing didn't -- or something like that. My point being that you can only imagine how exhausted I was by this time and you can see how I could not be held accountable for any slightly overly-zealous wrist action, which after long thought I am sure wasn't my wrist at all but something close to what I suggested earlier.
Besides that, there was all that business about setting the pages correctly within the printing framework, which I wasn't quite (but almost) able to do without help, and the roll that kept slipping off -- who knew that I had it on upside down? -- and then when the words came up on the screen in reverse no one told me that there was an adjust dial and that spinning the whole thing around wouldn't work well either (and in fact I saw that this was true with my own eyes, which is why I had to keep changing machines), especially when the whole thing went into cardiac jam. If those two much older-than-I-am women hadn't been caterwauling next to me I am sure things would have run much more smoothly too, but it isn't for me to judge who they allow into the library and who they keep out. I could tell these women were incompetent because they were at least fifty years old (imagine! fifty!) and they kept trying to instruct the other on how to run the machines, when all along I could have told them if they'd only asked. Mind you, after they laughed out loud when I tripped over the chair, well, let's just say they didn't endear themselves to me in any special way and if they had had some minor hope that I might offer my assistance, they were wrong. But as I said, it's the kids nowadays who know everything, not old women -- although come to think of it, that isn't entirely true either. In fact, when that sweet young man who occupied the first chair I had taken (I got all the way up to four) asked me how to turn off his machine -- and he couldn't have been more than seventeen -- I was more than happy to show him. Good thing I did, too, because my scarf was sitting underneath his coat right where I had left it.
Swing your partner round and round
Allemande left and a dosey-do...
<:^)
