Monday is the total solar eclipse, and there are absolutely no eclipse glasses to be had anywhere. Like...anywhere. Every single store that had been selling the glasses sold out weeks ago. People are losing their minds, trying to find some anywhere. Meanwhile, NASA decided back...whenever...to make and give something like 2 million of the glasses to libraries to give away. And so our library had "a limited number" of glasses to give away. I'm not sure how many, but we had 200 at our library, and we're one of the smallest branches. So maybe 2000 total? And our director, in all of her brilliance, decided to wait until today to hand them out.
We've been getting calls for weeks from people looking for the glasses. People have called from hours away about coming to get some, because we were literally the very last chance people had for getting glasses if they didn't have them yet. Staff at the library, from the very top on down, were losing their minds, convinced that today was going to be utter chaos and calamity. Meanwhile, i was like, "Look. It's going to be maybe 15 minutes of insanity, followed by a few hours of people being mad at us for not having any left." What i was worried about was line control.
See, we have two doors at our library, one in front and one on the side. If people lined up at both, there was no way to get everyone into one line. I suggested putting a sign on one of the doors saying that the line was at the other door. That idea was shot down. I suggested just keeping two lines. Shot down. They just said, "We're going to be handing them out, and your job is going to be to get the line in order and to tell people where to go." Okay.
People started lining up at least an hour before we opened. I had Juanito and the kids go early to line up so they could get glasses, because i figured people would be waiting. By the time we opened, the line wrapped around the corner of the building. We opened the doors, and (as i expected) people just formed a mob. I initially tried to make a line, but it was utterly hopeless, so i mostly just stood in the middle of the mob going, "I have no idea what to do right now." And when the dust settled, we were exactly one pair of glasses short for the people who were there immediately. (The last person didn't seem devastated.) It took 4 minutes for them to be gone. At least two men gave their glasses to kids from different families who came in and were really sad, which restored some of my faith in humanity.
So anyhow. Eclipse in two days! And we are ready! Yay!
Anyhow. This evening, my nephew Harrison had his third birthday party. He is utterly adorable. The kids had fun playing on the playground. I had fun catching up with my family after weeks of not seeing them. Harrison had fun opening presents. And we all got to eat delicious pizza and Costco cake. So it was a good night.
I didn't realize how hard it would be to get eclipse glasses and how big this whole thing would get. I waited until last week to get glasses and of course I couldn't get them anywhere! I was pretty disappointed. Then on Friday, my dad worked at the Kentwood branch and he heard they were giving eclipse glasses away on Saturday, but employees get first dibs. So he got two pairs of glasses! Yay!
ReplyDelete