Recommended Reading — One Angry Waitress

“A woman’s husband is turning into a great white shark, but she handles it pretty well as the same thing happened to her mother—except she turned into a Komodo dragon.”

“Okay…”

“A virus has contaminated all animal meat so corporations start breeding humans to be eaten instead. Then, a man falls for one of the women bred for the purpose of meat.”

“… and why wouldn’t he?”

“A young woman working in the publishing industry is having trouble getting her life together when she takes up with a married man. She ends up meeting the man’s wife by chance. It’s a really great scene involving some spilled lobster bisque and a bone saw.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“A Venus Fly trap is slowly taking over a dying mall while also eating people so it can grow larger. Oh, and it’s in love with its care-taker.”

“I see.”

These are the sorts of conversations I find myself having at the library when customers make the mistake of asking me for reading recommendations. A look of something like pain crosses their faces as I talk, detailing the plot of the book. Afterwards, I generally find what I’d recommended hidden away somewhere. Tucked between the inspirational romances, say, where it won’t be of harm to anyone else.

On my days off, people occasionally come in looking for “something really weird,” and my colleagues tell them, “Oh, it’s a shame Danica’s not here. She’s who you really want to talk to.” Though I’m just to actually meet any of these folks while on the job and I think my coworkers are just doing this because they feel bad for me.

I understand that my taste isn’t to everyone’s liking. In fact, there’ve been some real mishaps along the way. Once, I read a book about a kitten so cute it made anyone who looked at it would explode. This was to a tour of children who, upon reflection, were perhaps too young for the content. Each time I yelled “Kaboom!” (because we were already doing this and there was no turning back now) they jumped.

Then there was the occasion that I read about a kid who swapped his father for two goldfish and had to go about reversing a series of trades to get him back. I kept asking my audience, “Would you trade your father for ______” and one of the parents supervising kept replying with a yes so malevolently gleeful it made the rest of uncomfortable about what exactly her upbringing had entailed.

Every now and then though, I’ll get someone who really loves something I show to them. While visiting a senior’s home for adult story time a few months ago, I read a picture book about Chupacabras (a cryptid that feeds on the blood of livestock). One member of the crowd had nodded off and was snoring softly, while most of the others weren’t really paying attention. But a fellow in the back was really enjoying the innuendo of the words “goat sucker,” leaning forward each time I said it with his hands on his knees, grinning at me with gleaming-white false teeth.

So, I read those words with as much gusto as I could muster, just for him. Which is the point of the job, I suppose. It can be monotonous and repetitive; but every now and then, you get the chance to really make someone’s day.