The library is open for an hour and 40 minutes before school starts on "late start" days. This is a LOOONG stretch of time with anywhere from 30 to 70 kids in here, doing various things. Usually the last 15 minutes before the bell rings is devoted to massive print jobs shuttling through our one little black & white printer, and my one color printer in the back room. During that rush you can hear the printer literally groaning with effort, paper after paper scraping it raw on the way out.
This morning these two nice little girls showed up, obviously their first visit to the library. They seemed very young and timid, probably 9th grade. They only spoke Spanish, and were trying to find out how to print, and how much it cost, etc. Luckily, as is usually the case, there was another student nearby who jumped in to help as translator.
Turns out the two new girls needed COLOR printing, which involves an extra step (emailing or "sharing" via Google Docs), which turned out to be difficult to explain, even with the help of Awesome Translator Girl. We had them pull up the pictures they needed printed, and Translator Girl tried to help them email the pics to me. Part of my mind registered what the pictures were, but I was in total practical mode, since there were about 10 other kids lining up at the counter while we were trying to help these poor new girls.
Our first attempt failed, and in my panic as more and more kids were lining up at the main counter, I logged out of my own computer at my desk, and just had the girls use that. We had them log in and pull up the pictures they needed printed in color. When the "print preview" popped up, Translator Girl asked the two timid girls if that was indeed the way they needed the pictures printed. As we all stood there around my desk, staring at the computer screen, I realized that the pictures were giant full-color diagrams of:
1) THE VAGINA
2) THE PENIS
3) MALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM
4) FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM
But like I said, that line at the library counter wasn't getting any shorter, and shit needed to get done. So I was like, "Is that it? Is that how you want these printed?"
The timid girls indicated that no, they actually needed each picture printed on a separate sheet. So then I had to take over completely and save the vagina, the penis, and the pics of their respective environs to my computer, then insert them into a word doc, each in glorious full-color on its own page.
Finally when the pages were printed, I ran into the back room to grab them from the color printer, then dashed back out to the desk where there were now about a million kids all waiting for various things. I got the attention of the two timid girls and held up THE VAGINA, THE PENIS, THE MALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM, and THE FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM.
"Is this right? Is this how you wanted them?" I asked.
After they paid and left, I gave Translator Girl several good behavior raffle tickets we use here as part of a rewards system.
Hopefully the two timid new girls won't be so humiliated by the experience that they never return to the library.