Shhhhh.

As a freelance worker, I sometimes grow to miss all those delights that come with office work. The comfy chairs. The free water. The presence of other people, who sometimes go out and bring you coffee. Unlimited xerox use. To combat the 'I can do whatever I want all day' blues, I decided to pack up my stuff and head straight to the one place in America where contract workers, day traders, and the homeless can safely mingle: the public library.

The Watertown Free Public Library is a nice old building that used to be a mansion belonging to some mill baron or slave trader or something. Watertown, which is about 3 miles from downtown Boston used to be the summer community of the superrich, before they all moved to Truro. Apparently I am doing all this in the wrong order. But anyway, I went to the mansion. Entering through the back door, I went straight upstairs to the 'quiet study room.' To me, it has always seemed odd to have a room like this in a library, which is essentially supposed to be a, um, quiet study room. Or set of rooms. But there it was.

The Quiet Study Room is my new favorite place to get work done. For one, it does not have wireless internet access and so I do not waste time checking out my fantasy football team. For the record, OTAN (my co-coach is a French guy) is headed to the playoffs, in 2nd place. I predict a championship. I also do not...uh...well, there's a lot of stuff on the internet that can waste your time. I guess this is another thing I miss about a real job: getting paid to screw around, just as long as you are in your seat. If they made you go to gym and gave out grades instead of sticky notes, work would be high school.

Anyway, so three hours - every minute billable, a first - whipped by in the Quiet Study Room and my laptop battery died, so I headed downstairs to read magazines as a reward. If work is high school, then the regular part of the library is the cafeteria. I mean, except for the eating. Three people were on their phones. One of those women was interrupting her cell conversation to yell, across the room, to another patron. The two others were, like everyone else in the library at 1 pm, old. If you want to meet old people, the library is the place for you.

It is easy to find them, too, because old people tend to be loud. I don't know if it is because old people also tend to be deaf, or if it is because old people sometimes tend to be oblivious, but man alive does it seem like the lungs are the last things to go. I will do my best to reproduce the best of the monologues verbatim:

"THIS IS HARRY KAZMANIAN. KAZMANIAN. KAZ-MANIAN, KAZ. K-A-Z-M-A-wait. K-A-Z-M-A-N-I-A-N. IS THIS BIGELOW AUTO BODY? WHAT? WHAT? GOOD. OK, THIS IS MY SON'S PHONE SO I DON'T KNOW IF I'M HITTING THE RIGHT BUTTON, BUT I BROUGHT IN MY CAR FOR NEW BRAKES AND NOW I NEED A RIDE HOME. A RIDE HOME. I TOOK THE BUS TO THE LIBRARY TO WAIT AND NOW I NEED A RIDE. FROM YOU. WHY NOT? I DON'T HAVE NO MORE CHANGE. YOU HAVE MY CAR. I NEED A RIDE, NOW. TO HOME. OR TO GET MY CAR. MY SON IS AT WORK. A RIDE, FROM YOU."

Re-reading it now, I guess it was only really funny at the time because it was so damn loud. Even the other old people were laughing at this guy, unless maybe that was gas. I have heard that old people are sometimes a lot like babies. The librarians, for the record, did not appear bothered by shouting in the library. But I was bothered. Oh yes, I was.