I’m going crazy, wanna come?

My mother said this a lot when I was growing up. That, and “Stop this world, I want to get off” which I later learned was the name of a musical. My mother also sang wonderful songs like “Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he, he called for his pipe, he called for his bowl, he called for his fiddlers three. And we threw him out the window, the window, the second story window! Old King Cole was a merry old soul and we threw him out the window."

My cousin Art, bless his heart, was fond of the nothing song. “I do nothing nothing nothing, I do nothing all day long, I do absolutely nothing, how do you like my nothing song? Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse…”

This is the state of one’s mind, I’ve discovered, when one has to work with children all the time. And I’m not even working with them, just near them. They are here in the library with their parents, nannies, and grandparents, signing up for summer reading club. Or we’re calling them on the phone and they are sometimes calling us back because we need to know what school the kids are attending in the fall. (They get letters sent to the school saying Junior participated in the SRC program at X library.) (I’ve heard it gets you a lollipop and a certificate at the elementary school down the road.)

We are the largest one building library in our area, possibly in our state. We already (at the middle of the second week of registration) have over 1000 kids registered. Which is barely the tip of the iceberg—if we had full registration, it would exceed the 2000 we generally get by the end of each summer.

“Stay on the sunny side, always on the sunny side, stay on the sunny side of life…”

Oh help!