That Dewey Decimal number is 075 Newspapers in Italy & adjacent islands.
As for the comic, yeah, I’m with you. Works for 75% of it.
The library wants kids to read. And they want parents to be involved (but don’t make that a requirement). And this staffer’s take is additionally that the mom gets “points” for letting the kid ask about lack of formal restrictions even though she intends to impose her own.
Public libraries are not set up to be babysitters/child monitors. The staff member is encouraging continued parental involvement.
Is it just me, or does this strip reek of passive aggressivity? Librarians will happily circumvent the will of the parents, but will also claim they want over-supervised helicoptered kids in the library (maybe they really do, no wild kids running around…), and somehow insinuate that the mother hasn’t been doing a good job while blandly praising something hardly obviously intended; meanwhile the parent is doubling down on restrictive over-supervision, insinuating she doesn’t trust her kid (and with reason, because the library has made clear they will encourage the kid to do whatever she wants — just not in front of the parent…)
Blech! This strip just rubs me all the wrong ways.
The librarian wants children to be supervised when they’re in the library. “If you’re alone, I’ll give you something that your parent doesn’t want you to have – but I’ll tell you this only when you parent is right here, so that you’ll never be left alone.”
larK
It’s not just you. I have no idea what the cartoonist thought this strip was, but it is *AWFUL*!!!! For exactly the reasons you cite.
Actually, I’d’ve accepted it if the librarian was a subversive and the fourth panel was gone or it did not have the last two bubbles. No, that over protective parent is *NOT* what a librarian who wants a kid to have a library card wants, and, no, the helicopter parent gets *no* points for parenting.
Or if the librarian was a pussilanimous lackey to the parents. At least it’d be consistent.
larK, I can see what you’re saying. Given that the kid might be 8 years old (based on relative sizes [though she grows in panel two[), the parent may not consider the child responsible enough to have her own card. After all, if the kid is late returning or loses the book, it’s mum who is on the hook. But the permanently adolescent library worker (indicated by the multi-coloured hair, goofy hat, and trans-sexual Japanese comic book t-shirt [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD ]) thinks she knows better than the mother, who has known the kid for at least 8 years and the library worker is not responsible for anything besides her two cats and she gets a cheque from her parents each month to help her pay her rent and will gladly try to circumvent her authority. However, she doesn’t have the courage to openly challenge the mother and will fall back on some nonsensical ramblings if someone stands up to her.
I’m impressed you guys can understand the point of the comic enough to get mad about it. I still have no idea what the point is!
Our library has just gone fine-free — their mission is to get services to the public, and the fines were just getting in the way, while not providing any meaningful revenue. So now if you don’t return something, I think you can’t borrow anything else until you return it, but no fines, no fear, dread, and avoiding the library. And frankly, a library card is exactly the kind of thing you want your kid to start out on: low risk, learn responsibility, and hey, now at our library, no fines even! I pity this poor over-protected kid when she turns 18 and is set free to university and she gets her first credit card and has no idea how to deal with it, and binge drinks till she ends up in the hospital, where they’ll probably diagnose some STDs because she has no idea how sex works, either…
I mostly agree with larK. But also, did the mom “let her ask”? That would have made no sense.
@larK: You can get sex-ed books at the librar….ohhhhh.
Wow. I got my kids library cards as soon as I could. I wanted them to love reading, appreciate the library, learn responsibility and enjoy tracking on their own – and holding them responsible for it. How is an 8 year old going to get to the library and take out something age-inappropriate without the parent or a guardian there anyway? Of course, we didn’t have parent unsupervised Internet access then either.
“How is an 8 year old going to get to the library and take out something age-inappropriate without the parent or a guardian there anyway? ”
I could do that when I was 5, and did. Our library was on my way home from school.
While I mostly agree with the comments about helicopter parenting, there could be good reasons to not trust the kid that we don’t know about. e.g. maybe the mother has had enough experiment trusting the kid with things like this to know that the kid will check out expensive videos and lose them, and this library, like most libraries, has fines. Maybe the kid is going to watch lots of p-rn on the library computers.
CIDU Bill, I’d suggest this comic needs a geezer alert, as the geezers are out in force, complaining about “the kids today.” Mother is damned if she does (“Look at her helicoptering!”) and damned if she doesn’t (“Parents today just let their kids run riot, totally out of control, with no supervision!).
Catlover, there is a world outside your suburb. I live a two minute walk from my neighbourhood library. When I was 7 and got my first library card, I could walk 15 minutes from my school to the library. On the way home, since it was a 25 minute walk to my home, all uphill, and usually after dark, I’d take a streetcar and bus home. It cost a dime.
I’ve never seen a library where children’s library cards didn’t come with restrictions: if an 8-year-old wanted to read D. H. Lawrence, a parent would have to check it out for him.
Agreed, last panel ruins idea.
ObAnecdote: I was handling affairs for an elderly aunt, had PoA, including bank accounts. Quickly got tired of having to stand in line to deposit dividend checks, asked “How do I get an ATM card so I can do these at ATM?” That got the manager involved, who explained that I couldn’t get one–the aunt herself had to. “Or”, she continued, looking me firmly in the eye, “she can apply for it online and get it mailed to her”. “Oh, OK”, sez I. So I went home and did that.
Obviously some silly bank rule that made no sense: I had the bloody checkbook in my hand, could have drained the account if I’d wanted. And manager smart enough to realize (and me just barely smart enough to understand subtext).
Seems to me that DNH has it and some of you are thinking about it too much. Librarian now doesn’t have to worry about the kid running rampant. Why else would she make the “Great!” comment?
Well, having worked in banking and having to deal with PoA’s and also having had one in my dad’s final years, you were given a bum steer. Every jurisdiction is its own thing of course. However, the concept of PoA is that, as far as the law is concerned, you are that person. You can do everything they can do because you are them. That would include getting a bank card.
Now, that said, I’ve had to comply with very regulations around security and privacy (not specifically PoA-related) and would try to help people by very obviously hinting at what they must do because I can’t actually tell them. Some were very quick on the uptake. Some took a little more work and others…well, they just never got it and got madder and madder at me as I’d repeat myself slowly and deliberately and REALLY emphasise the important words. *sigh*
SB: Well, she did steer me right, ultimately, so I can’t complain, right?
And Social Security Administration of course makes up its own rules: they won’t accept PoA for things like Medicare enrollment (she’d let it lapse), wanted me to drag her down to the office. Fortunately she was retired federal employee, had FEPBlue and sufficient money, which was good enough. Irritated me, though — I have to spend half a day and disturb this poor lady so I can *give them money*?!?!
@SingaporeBill: Mr. Incredible, is that you?
@larK: I can tell you, that scene was written by someone who has lived it. :)
” However, the concept of PoA is that, as far as the law is concerned, you are that person. You can do everything they can do because you are them.”
Except there’s this thing called a “limited power of attorney”, which does not, in fact, allow you to substitute your decisions for someone else’s. Because, surprise, it has limits.
@SingaporeBill: Did you punch your boss through wall?!?
There’s a lot of unwarranted assumptions about these characters in the first half of the comments.
@Winter Wallaby: My company was not like that. We were quite liberal with paying claims. If it could be supported by the policy, I generally had no problem in that respect. So that part of working claims was fairly easy. What annoyed me was when I’d say no to something definitely not covered and the client would complain to management and they’d roll over and give in. I’d only deny when there was no way to justify it in the policy. Why bother doing my job properly if they’re not going to back me up?
The oblique hints were when I was in the customer service department. For example, if someone died and the family called to see if they had coverage with us (Keep your papers where they can be found, people) I couldn’t say yes unless they were named as beneficiary or they were the executor and they sent us the appropriate support in docs (copy of will, death cert). If no will (make a will people and name your beneficiary, people), they have to go to court to be appointed administrator. That could take months and cost a fair bit of money. So, lots of hoops just to find out if there is active policy on file. In those cases, I would hint as to whether it was worthwhile to do so, without explicitly stating. That was pretty common.
I claims, people would often ask if a claim on their homeowner’s insurance would increase their premium. I was supposed to say I could was not sure. Now, I knew it would. All other things equal, it’d be a 29% increase and they would not get the no-claims discount back for 5 years. In that case, I would try to hint they might choose to withdraw the claim if they felt it was not in their interests to continue. If, for example, they had a $2000 loss, a $1000 deductible and an annual premium of $2000, they’d be worse off if they claimed. I’d be pretty obvious and a lot of people got it and would thank me and withdraw the claim. Others would become quite irate and accuse me of trying to cheat them by trying to avoid paying out. In that case, I’d process the claim and they’d be happy because they stood up to “that jerk at the insurance company.”
Well, in the two cases I’m speaking of–the bank and SSA–neither even looked at the PoA (obviously the bank had done so earlier, but the bank manager didn’t when she was nudge-nudge-wink-wink telling me how to get an ATM card, and SSA said “We do not recognize Powers of Attorney).
Not all homeowner claims will raise rates, at least at my company. Wind/storm claims don’t raise your individual rates, but will affect the area rates.
@ Singapore Bill – “…the kid might be 8 years old (based on relative sizes [though she grows in panel two])…”
That was sort of my impression, too, but if you look closely, the kid’s head stays at the same level in all four panels. It’s the librarian who inexplicably shrinks (in the third panel).
@Kilby:
“It’s the librarian who inexplicably shrinks (in the third panel).”
Creative way of dealing with budget-mandated staff cutbacks.
Seems to be back to the normal in the fourth panel, so I guess they shifted some resources.
As a librarian, I find most comics, tv episodes, etc about libraries to be wrong. Bill, I have never worked in a library where children were blocked from checking any book out – the onus is on the parent to supervise selection. I’ve also never worked in a library that doesn’t require a parent to co-sign as it were for a library card. Fine free? At some point cost does kick in – you get billed if you don’t return the item. And finally, libraries are home to a wide cross-section of people – a lot that you wouldn’t want your child to be around unsupervised – and that has been the case for years. My first job in the ’70s had a locked bathroom due to a perv situation – and that bathroom was no secluded. We librarians work hard to ensure everyone’s safety, but it’s not always possible.
I got my first library card when I was 6. But I think my mother had to get it for me, and children were restricted to the children’s section.
@SingaporeBill
> Catlover, there is a world outside your suburb.
Raised in the Bronx. Wandered around free range myself. Back in the days it was totally normal for an 8 year old unattended to be walking around Broadway to go ice skating or play slot cars or head into the hobby shop or stroll around Van Cortlandt Park.
Should I be wrong about something, it is my understanding that parents have been told to keep a much tighter leash on their children for decades.
“it is my understanding that parents have been told to keep a much tighter leash on their children for decades.”
When I was growing up in Amsterdam, I was – literally – on a leash (with harness) any time we were out and about, because of the canals. If/When you see a child that way now and here, gasps of anger arise. Heck, it’s for the child’s own safety and no different than keeping a dog (or c*t) on a leash outside.
Arthur, while I agree with the sentiment behind that bill of rights, it strikes me as really badly written and overbroad.
Singapore Bill: Huh, when my house was broken into, the insurance company told my wife that it wasn’t worth it for us to file the claim. It was a while ago, though, and I only heard it secondhand through my wife – it’s possible the losses were even less than the deductible.
CIDU Bill: Your libraries have all had age-based restrictions on books? That souds odd to me. Do the librarians have to manually go through all the books, and decide that Brave New World needs an age restriction, but Lord of the Flies does not? (And where does the Bible go?)
(I think all libraries have to have age-based restrictions on computers, so my comment about computers was silly.)
Winter, there was always a children’s section and a main section. A children’s card (under age 12, usually) allowed you to take out books only from the children’s section. Simple enough.
I have major problems with the “Rights of Parents to Make Rational Decision” section, since it treats children as property.
My suggestion is to say it’s okay to leave kids in the car for short periods of time — but the doors have to be unlocked and you have to leave your wallet and call phone on top of the dashboard.
Interesting – my kid’s library card works throughout the library.
“it is my understanding that parents have been told to keep a much tighter leash on their children for decades.”
Not ALL parents. Just the ones who have children who shouldn’t be off-leash in the first place. Some children are responsible and self-disciplined and able to handle themselves in public. Nobody (rational) complains about them. But the ones that aren’t responsible for themselves, who aren’t able to handle themselves in public… those are the ones who need closer parental supervision, and so rarely actually get it.
Dinkg, what about when the kid goes to the library without a parent? When I was a kid, I can’t remember my parents EVER accompanying me to the library (though I suppose one of them must have at least once)
“Some children are responsible and self-disciplined and able to handle themselves in public. Nobody (rational) complains about them.”
That may not be the case. People have had Child Protective Services called for letting their kids walk home from school. There have been several instances in different places. This one is near the top of my search results:
“That may not be the case. People have had Child Protective Services called for letting their kids walk home from school. ”
Not by rational people.
When I was a kid, the public libraries had a children’s room for all the kids under 16, plus a “young adults” room for kids 16 to 17. You could browse anywhere, but you could check out books only from the children’s room if you were under 16.
Where are the Bibles? In the Library of Congress system they are filed under “BS” of course.
FWIW… in Berkeley Ca, children could check out anything and go everywhere but usually didn’t *want* to check out any adult books. In Santa Fe, NM children weren’t *allowed* in the adult section unless they were 12. I found that *so* strange and hard to get used to.
“but you could check out books only from the children’s room if you were under 16.”
Uh, why? What if you were an adult and wanted to read a children’s book? (one of my favorite forms of literature….)
“When I was a kid, I can’t remember my parents EVER accompanying me to the library”
In the suburbs, you probably need one to drive you there.
The tiny little town I live in is currently building a tiny little branch library, it should open next year. It’s close enough to walk to. The major advantage is likely to be the ability to pick up and drop off books ordered from the much more substantial county library, that is so far away I don’t even know where it is.
When I was a kid, what I wanted to read was science-fiction, and the library barely had any back then. What they had for people my age was a nearly-complete set of Hardy Boys books… with copyrights about 30 years back. The plots were OK, but the dialog was… odd. Like, teenagers don’t talk like that, daddy-o.
” What if you were an adult and wanted to read a children’s book? ”
If you are an adult and you walk into the children’s section without a child in tow, you can expect to be followed and watched intently.
A few years back, my sister and my niece were visiting from across the country and I wanted to get some Dr. Seuss books for while they were there. (My kid is almost 20 years older than her kid.)
“Uh, why? What if you were an adult and wanted to read a children’s book? (one of my favorite forms of literature….)”
I’m sure MiB meant that if you were under 16, you could only check out books from the children’s room and nowhere else…pretty much what he said. I doubt they prevented adults from checking out children’s books.
I never had any problems walking into a children’s section to get a book.
If I tried to join Miss Mary’s Milk-and-Cookies reading hour, on the other hand, there might have been issues.
“In the suburbs, you probably need one to drive you there.”
I lived in the suburbs. I walked.
Anyone have ‘book-mobiles’? It was a bus filled with books organised by a nearby town’s library that came around to our ‘rural’ area as there was no library close to us. It would come around every week or so and functioned like a regular library. You could check books out or order them, and drop them off or pick them up when the bus came back on its scheduled visits.
Some of the Philly suburbs have bookmobiles.
More than 50 years later, I still remember that the bookmobile came to out Neighborhood Mondays at 4. They had a complete set of Danny Dunn (juvenile science fiction) books, and I thought then (and still do) that this was because we weren’t a big enough town to warrant Tom Swift books.
@ Bill – Don‘t knock “Danny Dunn”. I read every single book that our elementary school library had, even after I began to be able to recognize the gigantic plot holes in the pseudo-science. They were still enjoyable, even if they were sometimes a bit silly.
I wasn’t a Tom Swift fan. I read (and still reread) Rick Brant, though.
@ Bookmobiles – We have a couple of stationary “book trading stations” in the area. It’s normally a decommissioned telephone booth, into which shelves have been installed. There’s no paperwork, just take (or leave) any book you like. Of course, that usually means that most of the books are ancient garbage that really belongs in an incinerator(*), but I have occasionally discovered a few gems.
P.S. (*) – One such booth is located right in front of the local trash dump recycling center, which both facilitates donations as well as periodic ultimate disposal when the booth gets too full.
“I lived in the suburbs. I walked.”
I lived in the suburbs, too. About halfway between two of them, actually, making the walking trip about 5 or 6 miles, either way.
When my daughter was little, we had a little branch in the strip mall just the other side of the freeway from my house. Then they built a brand-new one… next to the airport, about 5 or 6 miles away.
Having a library within walking distance is nice, but nowhere NEAR a universal experience.
For me, it was the used bookstore that was the center of literacy, and not the library.. But not everybody has a Powell’s.
Kilby, I’m not knocking Danny Dunn at all: I was a big fan, and I still remember some of the stories.
Everything that the librarian in the comic does makes sense to me, but not when it’s all put together. Librarians are big on encouraging kids to read, and generally aren’t big on the “they’re too young to be interested in…”. On the other hand, they’re very big on parents monitoring what their kids are reading/watching, because it’s the parents’ job to do that, not the librarians’. (This is made very clear every time there is an uproar over a kid borrowing an age-restricted movie from the library.)
As for helicopter parenting – my library has an official policy that children under 9 must be supervised. A friend of mine was chided when her son got away from her upstairs in the adult department (I don’t think that the librarian realised that he wasn’t intentionally left unsupervised). On the other hand, when my two-year-old decided to dash upstairs to read, the librarian who found him didn’t say anything to me about it (this may be because she’d seen me freaking out earlier).
At my library you can’t get your own card if you’re under 13 – you have to have a parent or guardian sign your card. (Annoyingly it won’t show my kids’ books when I log into my account, despite the fact that I’m responsible for all of them, and they know it.)
And a lot of the parents I know base what their kids are allowed to do on whether or not we’re worried that someone would report it, not on if our kid can handle it.
The ‘libraries of my childhood’ were 1) The Bookmobile, with Mrs. Brown the Librarian, who saved all the Freddy the Pig books for me [the bookmobile came to the school across the street from my house every week in the summer]; 2) The Children’s Library, located in a beautiful former church, about a half-mile from the ‘grownups’ library’.
When the former church/library was purchased and made into a high-end restaurant (didn’t last long; now it’s back to being a church again), and both libraries were combined into a brand new facility, I always resented (and still do) the kids running wild in the building. Well, ‘wild’ to me would probably not be such to others, but I still think – in libraries – children should be not seen, not heard. Guess I was spoilt by my youth in ‘my own’ library.
Mitch4 – Might be that the mom told the girl that the library does not allow her to get a card as mom thought that and tired of hearing “I want a library card” encouraged/allowed the girl to ask so that she would be told she could not get a card and then she would stop bothering her mom.
Did anyone else read “Rosa Too Little” as a child?
Phil Smith III – Robert had a power of attorney for his mom (only) at her bank. He was told that he could make withdrawals in person but could not sign checks as they required paperwork to be signed in front of a platform person every time a withdrawal was made.
Phil Smith III – Husband and I can’t even get POAs for each other at Medicare without going into a Social Security office and sitting there, more likely most of a day. We recently had to change our bank account they that they use and we don’t like to do financial things online. I called – they called back an hour later. He could not even say “okay for my wife to give you the info – I had to help him change his while he spoke to them. (I did change my mine also.)
My first library was in Brooklyn. I could not walk to it alone – one had to cross avenues and I was only allowed to cross streets (yes, in Brooklyn there is a difference – streets were narrower, avenues ran at 90 degrees (more or less) to streets and were through streets with more and (intended to have) faster traffic. When mom learned to drive we even drove there at least once. ( I think I saw the replacement library for that library on TV a few weeks ago).
One could get a library card when one could write their name (as in the book I mentioned a few posts back). I must have been 4 when I got mine as I had it the summer before I went to kindergarten and was 4 when I started same. I then got a library card out here when we moved out to Long Island. (I may have also had one in Rockaway Beach- Arverne – it seems to me that I took books out from it on my own but not sure if that was when I was 4 before we moved out here or when I was 12 and we went back for a summer after not going there between 4 & 12.) And then have one here.
The card out here was for the children’s room only – a problem as I was reading adult books while still in elementary school. I remember when I had an adult card in junior high having a problem with some book I wanted to take out in the adult section and needing mom’s permission.
There was a children’s reading program every summer. One had to read a certain number of books – I think 12, but it may have been 8 – which was one a week. I would go in the first week and take out a stack of books and read them and come back the next week, take out more and by the end of the second week the latest I would have had read the number of books of needed to finish and the library ladies always did not believe me. Then if one was suppose to read a number of fiction books and a number of non-fiction books I would end up arguing with them that the non- fiction books I had read were better than fiction books as provided true information not a story. – I usually won.
Tom Swift, Rick Brand (the wailing octopus), along with Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, Honey Bunch – with and without Norman, The Dana Girls, Donna someone, The Five Little Peppers, and lots of other books – all mine, all lost in my mom’s basement in Hurricane Sandy – sigh.
Comics I Don't Understand 
That Dewey Decimal number is 075 Newspapers in Italy & adjacent islands.
As for the comic, yeah, I’m with you. Works for 75% of it.
The library wants kids to read. And they want parents to be involved (but don’t make that a requirement). And this staffer’s take is additionally that the mom gets “points” for letting the kid ask about lack of formal restrictions even though she intends to impose her own.
Public libraries are not set up to be babysitters/child monitors. The staff member is encouraging continued parental involvement.
Is it just me, or does this strip reek of passive aggressivity? Librarians will happily circumvent the will of the parents, but will also claim they want over-supervised helicoptered kids in the library (maybe they really do, no wild kids running around…), and somehow insinuate that the mother hasn’t been doing a good job while blandly praising something hardly obviously intended; meanwhile the parent is doubling down on restrictive over-supervision, insinuating she doesn’t trust her kid (and with reason, because the library has made clear they will encourage the kid to do whatever she wants — just not in front of the parent…)
Blech! This strip just rubs me all the wrong ways.
The librarian wants children to be supervised when they’re in the library. “If you’re alone, I’ll give you something that your parent doesn’t want you to have – but I’ll tell you this only when you parent is right here, so that you’ll never be left alone.”
larK
It’s not just you. I have no idea what the cartoonist thought this strip was, but it is *AWFUL*!!!! For exactly the reasons you cite.
Actually, I’d’ve accepted it if the librarian was a subversive and the fourth panel was gone or it did not have the last two bubbles. No, that over protective parent is *NOT* what a librarian who wants a kid to have a library card wants, and, no, the helicopter parent gets *no* points for parenting.
Or if the librarian was a pussilanimous lackey to the parents. At least it’d be consistent.
larK, I can see what you’re saying. Given that the kid might be 8 years old (based on relative sizes [though she grows in panel two[), the parent may not consider the child responsible enough to have her own card. After all, if the kid is late returning or loses the book, it’s mum who is on the hook. But the permanently adolescent library worker (indicated by the multi-coloured hair, goofy hat, and trans-sexual Japanese comic book t-shirt [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD ]) thinks she knows better than the mother, who has known the kid for at least 8 years and the library worker is not responsible for anything besides her two cats and she gets a cheque from her parents each month to help her pay her rent and will gladly try to circumvent her authority. However, she doesn’t have the courage to openly challenge the mother and will fall back on some nonsensical ramblings if someone stands up to her.
I’m impressed you guys can understand the point of the comic enough to get mad about it. I still have no idea what the point is!
Our library has just gone fine-free — their mission is to get services to the public, and the fines were just getting in the way, while not providing any meaningful revenue. So now if you don’t return something, I think you can’t borrow anything else until you return it, but no fines, no fear, dread, and avoiding the library. And frankly, a library card is exactly the kind of thing you want your kid to start out on: low risk, learn responsibility, and hey, now at our library, no fines even! I pity this poor over-protected kid when she turns 18 and is set free to university and she gets her first credit card and has no idea how to deal with it, and binge drinks till she ends up in the hospital, where they’ll probably diagnose some STDs because she has no idea how sex works, either…
I mostly agree with larK. But also, did the mom “let her ask”? That would have made no sense.
@larK: You can get sex-ed books at the librar….ohhhhh.
Wow. I got my kids library cards as soon as I could. I wanted them to love reading, appreciate the library, learn responsibility and enjoy tracking on their own – and holding them responsible for it. How is an 8 year old going to get to the library and take out something age-inappropriate without the parent or a guardian there anyway? Of course, we didn’t have parent unsupervised Internet access then either.
“How is an 8 year old going to get to the library and take out something age-inappropriate without the parent or a guardian there anyway? ”
I could do that when I was 5, and did. Our library was on my way home from school.
While I mostly agree with the comments about helicopter parenting, there could be good reasons to not trust the kid that we don’t know about. e.g. maybe the mother has had enough experiment trusting the kid with things like this to know that the kid will check out expensive videos and lose them, and this library, like most libraries, has fines. Maybe the kid is going to watch lots of p-rn on the library computers.
CIDU Bill, I’d suggest this comic needs a geezer alert, as the geezers are out in force, complaining about “the kids today.” Mother is damned if she does (“Look at her helicoptering!”) and damned if she doesn’t (“Parents today just let their kids run riot, totally out of control, with no supervision!).
Catlover, there is a world outside your suburb. I live a two minute walk from my neighbourhood library. When I was 7 and got my first library card, I could walk 15 minutes from my school to the library. On the way home, since it was a 25 minute walk to my home, all uphill, and usually after dark, I’d take a streetcar and bus home. It cost a dime.
I’ve never seen a library where children’s library cards didn’t come with restrictions: if an 8-year-old wanted to read D. H. Lawrence, a parent would have to check it out for him.
Agreed, last panel ruins idea.
ObAnecdote: I was handling affairs for an elderly aunt, had PoA, including bank accounts. Quickly got tired of having to stand in line to deposit dividend checks, asked “How do I get an ATM card so I can do these at ATM?” That got the manager involved, who explained that I couldn’t get one–the aunt herself had to. “Or”, she continued, looking me firmly in the eye, “she can apply for it online and get it mailed to her”. “Oh, OK”, sez I. So I went home and did that.
Obviously some silly bank rule that made no sense: I had the bloody checkbook in my hand, could have drained the account if I’d wanted. And manager smart enough to realize (and me just barely smart enough to understand subtext).
Seems to me that DNH has it and some of you are thinking about it too much. Librarian now doesn’t have to worry about the kid running rampant. Why else would she make the “Great!” comment?
Well, having worked in banking and having to deal with PoA’s and also having had one in my dad’s final years, you were given a bum steer. Every jurisdiction is its own thing of course. However, the concept of PoA is that, as far as the law is concerned, you are that person. You can do everything they can do because you are them. That would include getting a bank card.
Now, that said, I’ve had to comply with very regulations around security and privacy (not specifically PoA-related) and would try to help people by very obviously hinting at what they must do because I can’t actually tell them. Some were very quick on the uptake. Some took a little more work and others…well, they just never got it and got madder and madder at me as I’d repeat myself slowly and deliberately and REALLY emphasise the important words. *sigh*
SB: Well, she did steer me right, ultimately, so I can’t complain, right?
And Social Security Administration of course makes up its own rules: they won’t accept PoA for things like Medicare enrollment (she’d let it lapse), wanted me to drag her down to the office. Fortunately she was retired federal employee, had FEPBlue and sufficient money, which was good enough. Irritated me, though — I have to spend half a day and disturb this poor lady so I can *give them money*?!?!
@SingaporeBill: Mr. Incredible, is that you?
@larK: I can tell you, that scene was written by someone who has lived it. :)
” However, the concept of PoA is that, as far as the law is concerned, you are that person. You can do everything they can do because you are them.”
Except there’s this thing called a “limited power of attorney”, which does not, in fact, allow you to substitute your decisions for someone else’s. Because, surprise, it has limits.
@SingaporeBill: Did you punch your boss through wall?!?
There’s a lot of unwarranted assumptions about these characters in the first half of the comments.
@Winter Wallaby: My company was not like that. We were quite liberal with paying claims. If it could be supported by the policy, I generally had no problem in that respect. So that part of working claims was fairly easy. What annoyed me was when I’d say no to something definitely not covered and the client would complain to management and they’d roll over and give in. I’d only deny when there was no way to justify it in the policy. Why bother doing my job properly if they’re not going to back me up?
The oblique hints were when I was in the customer service department. For example, if someone died and the family called to see if they had coverage with us (Keep your papers where they can be found, people) I couldn’t say yes unless they were named as beneficiary or they were the executor and they sent us the appropriate support in docs (copy of will, death cert). If no will (make a will people and name your beneficiary, people), they have to go to court to be appointed administrator. That could take months and cost a fair bit of money. So, lots of hoops just to find out if there is active policy on file. In those cases, I would hint as to whether it was worthwhile to do so, without explicitly stating. That was pretty common.
I claims, people would often ask if a claim on their homeowner’s insurance would increase their premium. I was supposed to say I could was not sure. Now, I knew it would. All other things equal, it’d be a 29% increase and they would not get the no-claims discount back for 5 years. In that case, I would try to hint they might choose to withdraw the claim if they felt it was not in their interests to continue. If, for example, they had a $2000 loss, a $1000 deductible and an annual premium of $2000, they’d be worse off if they claimed. I’d be pretty obvious and a lot of people got it and would thank me and withdraw the claim. Others would become quite irate and accuse me of trying to cheat them by trying to avoid paying out. In that case, I’d process the claim and they’d be happy because they stood up to “that jerk at the insurance company.”
Well, in the two cases I’m speaking of–the bank and SSA–neither even looked at the PoA (obviously the bank had done so earlier, but the bank manager didn’t when she was nudge-nudge-wink-wink telling me how to get an ATM card, and SSA said “We do not recognize Powers of Attorney).
Not all homeowner claims will raise rates, at least at my company. Wind/storm claims don’t raise your individual rates, but will affect the area rates.
@ Singapore Bill – “…the kid might be 8 years old (based on relative sizes [though she grows in panel two])…”
That was sort of my impression, too, but if you look closely, the kid’s head stays at the same level in all four panels. It’s the librarian who inexplicably shrinks (in the third panel).
@Kilby:
“It’s the librarian who inexplicably shrinks (in the third panel).”
Creative way of dealing with budget-mandated staff cutbacks.
Seems to be back to the normal in the fourth panel, so I guess they shifted some resources.
As a librarian, I find most comics, tv episodes, etc about libraries to be wrong. Bill, I have never worked in a library where children were blocked from checking any book out – the onus is on the parent to supervise selection. I’ve also never worked in a library that doesn’t require a parent to co-sign as it were for a library card. Fine free? At some point cost does kick in – you get billed if you don’t return the item. And finally, libraries are home to a wide cross-section of people – a lot that you wouldn’t want your child to be around unsupervised – and that has been the case for years. My first job in the ’70s had a locked bathroom due to a perv situation – and that bathroom was no secluded. We librarians work hard to ensure everyone’s safety, but it’s not always possible.
I got my first library card when I was 6. But I think my mother had to get it for me, and children were restricted to the children’s section.
@SingaporeBill
> Catlover, there is a world outside your suburb.
Raised in the Bronx. Wandered around free range myself. Back in the days it was totally normal for an 8 year old unattended to be walking around Broadway to go ice skating or play slot cars or head into the hobby shop or stroll around Van Cortlandt Park.
Should I be wrong about something, it is my understanding that parents have been told to keep a much tighter leash on their children for decades.
“it is my understanding that parents have been told to keep a much tighter leash on their children for decades.”
When I was growing up in Amsterdam, I was – literally – on a leash (with harness) any time we were out and about, because of the canals. If/When you see a child that way now and here, gasps of anger arise. Heck, it’s for the child’s own safety and no different than keeping a dog (or c*t) on a leash outside.
it’s gotten to the point where something like this is necessary:
http://www.freerangekids.com/the-free-range-kids-parents-bill-of-rights/
Arthur, while I agree with the sentiment behind that bill of rights, it strikes me as really badly written and overbroad.
Singapore Bill: Huh, when my house was broken into, the insurance company told my wife that it wasn’t worth it for us to file the claim. It was a while ago, though, and I only heard it secondhand through my wife – it’s possible the losses were even less than the deductible.
CIDU Bill: Your libraries have all had age-based restrictions on books? That souds odd to me. Do the librarians have to manually go through all the books, and decide that Brave New World needs an age restriction, but Lord of the Flies does not? (And where does the Bible go?)
(I think all libraries have to have age-based restrictions on computers, so my comment about computers was silly.)
Winter, there was always a children’s section and a main section. A children’s card (under age 12, usually) allowed you to take out books only from the children’s section. Simple enough.
I have major problems with the “Rights of Parents to Make Rational Decision” section, since it treats children as property.
My suggestion is to say it’s okay to leave kids in the car for short periods of time — but the doors have to be unlocked and you have to leave your wallet and call phone on top of the dashboard.
Interesting – my kid’s library card works throughout the library.
“it is my understanding that parents have been told to keep a much tighter leash on their children for decades.”
Not ALL parents. Just the ones who have children who shouldn’t be off-leash in the first place. Some children are responsible and self-disciplined and able to handle themselves in public. Nobody (rational) complains about them. But the ones that aren’t responsible for themselves, who aren’t able to handle themselves in public… those are the ones who need closer parental supervision, and so rarely actually get it.
Dinkg, what about when the kid goes to the library without a parent? When I was a kid, I can’t remember my parents EVER accompanying me to the library (though I suppose one of them must have at least once)
“Some children are responsible and self-disciplined and able to handle themselves in public. Nobody (rational) complains about them.”
That may not be the case. People have had Child Protective Services called for letting their kids walk home from school. There have been several instances in different places. This one is near the top of my search results:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html
“That may not be the case. People have had Child Protective Services called for letting their kids walk home from school. ”
Not by rational people.
When I was a kid, the public libraries had a children’s room for all the kids under 16, plus a “young adults” room for kids 16 to 17. You could browse anywhere, but you could check out books only from the children’s room if you were under 16.
Where are the Bibles? In the Library of Congress system they are filed under “BS” of course.
FWIW… in Berkeley Ca, children could check out anything and go everywhere but usually didn’t *want* to check out any adult books. In Santa Fe, NM children weren’t *allowed* in the adult section unless they were 12. I found that *so* strange and hard to get used to.
“but you could check out books only from the children’s room if you were under 16.”
Uh, why? What if you were an adult and wanted to read a children’s book? (one of my favorite forms of literature….)
“When I was a kid, I can’t remember my parents EVER accompanying me to the library”
In the suburbs, you probably need one to drive you there.
The tiny little town I live in is currently building a tiny little branch library, it should open next year. It’s close enough to walk to. The major advantage is likely to be the ability to pick up and drop off books ordered from the much more substantial county library, that is so far away I don’t even know where it is.
When I was a kid, what I wanted to read was science-fiction, and the library barely had any back then. What they had for people my age was a nearly-complete set of Hardy Boys books… with copyrights about 30 years back. The plots were OK, but the dialog was… odd. Like, teenagers don’t talk like that, daddy-o.
” What if you were an adult and wanted to read a children’s book? ”
If you are an adult and you walk into the children’s section without a child in tow, you can expect to be followed and watched intently.
A few years back, my sister and my niece were visiting from across the country and I wanted to get some Dr. Seuss books for while they were there. (My kid is almost 20 years older than her kid.)
“Uh, why? What if you were an adult and wanted to read a children’s book? (one of my favorite forms of literature….)”
I’m sure MiB meant that if you were under 16, you could only check out books from the children’s room and nowhere else…pretty much what he said. I doubt they prevented adults from checking out children’s books.
I never had any problems walking into a children’s section to get a book.
If I tried to join Miss Mary’s Milk-and-Cookies reading hour, on the other hand, there might have been issues.
“In the suburbs, you probably need one to drive you there.”
I lived in the suburbs. I walked.
Anyone have ‘book-mobiles’? It was a bus filled with books organised by a nearby town’s library that came around to our ‘rural’ area as there was no library close to us. It would come around every week or so and functioned like a regular library. You could check books out or order them, and drop them off or pick them up when the bus came back on its scheduled visits.
Some of the Philly suburbs have bookmobiles.
More than 50 years later, I still remember that the bookmobile came to out Neighborhood Mondays at 4. They had a complete set of Danny Dunn (juvenile science fiction) books, and I thought then (and still do) that this was because we weren’t a big enough town to warrant Tom Swift books.
@ Bill – Don‘t knock “Danny Dunn”. I read every single book that our elementary school library had, even after I began to be able to recognize the gigantic plot holes in the pseudo-science. They were still enjoyable, even if they were sometimes a bit silly.
I wasn’t a Tom Swift fan. I read (and still reread) Rick Brant, though.
@ Bookmobiles – We have a couple of stationary “book trading stations” in the area. It’s normally a decommissioned telephone booth, into which shelves have been installed. There’s no paperwork, just take (or leave) any book you like. Of course, that usually means that most of the books are ancient garbage that really belongs in an incinerator(*), but I have occasionally discovered a few gems.
P.S. (*) – One such booth is located right in front of the local
trash dumprecycling center, which both facilitates donations as well as periodic ultimate disposal when the booth gets too full.“I lived in the suburbs. I walked.”
I lived in the suburbs, too. About halfway between two of them, actually, making the walking trip about 5 or 6 miles, either way.
When my daughter was little, we had a little branch in the strip mall just the other side of the freeway from my house. Then they built a brand-new one… next to the airport, about 5 or 6 miles away.
Having a library within walking distance is nice, but nowhere NEAR a universal experience.
For me, it was the used bookstore that was the center of literacy, and not the library.. But not everybody has a Powell’s.
Kilby, I’m not knocking Danny Dunn at all: I was a big fan, and I still remember some of the stories.
Everything that the librarian in the comic does makes sense to me, but not when it’s all put together. Librarians are big on encouraging kids to read, and generally aren’t big on the “they’re too young to be interested in…”. On the other hand, they’re very big on parents monitoring what their kids are reading/watching, because it’s the parents’ job to do that, not the librarians’. (This is made very clear every time there is an uproar over a kid borrowing an age-restricted movie from the library.)
As for helicopter parenting – my library has an official policy that children under 9 must be supervised. A friend of mine was chided when her son got away from her upstairs in the adult department (I don’t think that the librarian realised that he wasn’t intentionally left unsupervised). On the other hand, when my two-year-old decided to dash upstairs to read, the librarian who found him didn’t say anything to me about it (this may be because she’d seen me freaking out earlier).
At my library you can’t get your own card if you’re under 13 – you have to have a parent or guardian sign your card. (Annoyingly it won’t show my kids’ books when I log into my account, despite the fact that I’m responsible for all of them, and they know it.)
And a lot of the parents I know base what their kids are allowed to do on whether or not we’re worried that someone would report it, not on if our kid can handle it.
The ‘libraries of my childhood’ were 1) The Bookmobile, with Mrs. Brown the Librarian, who saved all the Freddy the Pig books for me [the bookmobile came to the school across the street from my house every week in the summer]; 2) The Children’s Library, located in a beautiful former church, about a half-mile from the ‘grownups’ library’.
When the former church/library was purchased and made into a high-end restaurant (didn’t last long; now it’s back to being a church again), and both libraries were combined into a brand new facility, I always resented (and still do) the kids running wild in the building. Well, ‘wild’ to me would probably not be such to others, but I still think – in libraries – children should be not seen, not heard. Guess I was spoilt by my youth in ‘my own’ library.
Mitch4 – Might be that the mom told the girl that the library does not allow her to get a card as mom thought that and tired of hearing “I want a library card” encouraged/allowed the girl to ask so that she would be told she could not get a card and then she would stop bothering her mom.
Did anyone else read “Rosa Too Little” as a child?
Phil Smith III – Robert had a power of attorney for his mom (only) at her bank. He was told that he could make withdrawals in person but could not sign checks as they required paperwork to be signed in front of a platform person every time a withdrawal was made.
Phil Smith III – Husband and I can’t even get POAs for each other at Medicare without going into a Social Security office and sitting there, more likely most of a day. We recently had to change our bank account they that they use and we don’t like to do financial things online. I called – they called back an hour later. He could not even say “okay for my wife to give you the info – I had to help him change his while he spoke to them. (I did change my mine also.)
My first library was in Brooklyn. I could not walk to it alone – one had to cross avenues and I was only allowed to cross streets (yes, in Brooklyn there is a difference – streets were narrower, avenues ran at 90 degrees (more or less) to streets and were through streets with more and (intended to have) faster traffic. When mom learned to drive we even drove there at least once. ( I think I saw the replacement library for that library on TV a few weeks ago).
One could get a library card when one could write their name (as in the book I mentioned a few posts back). I must have been 4 when I got mine as I had it the summer before I went to kindergarten and was 4 when I started same. I then got a library card out here when we moved out to Long Island. (I may have also had one in Rockaway Beach- Arverne – it seems to me that I took books out from it on my own but not sure if that was when I was 4 before we moved out here or when I was 12 and we went back for a summer after not going there between 4 & 12.) And then have one here.
The card out here was for the children’s room only – a problem as I was reading adult books while still in elementary school. I remember when I had an adult card in junior high having a problem with some book I wanted to take out in the adult section and needing mom’s permission.
There was a children’s reading program every summer. One had to read a certain number of books – I think 12, but it may have been 8 – which was one a week. I would go in the first week and take out a stack of books and read them and come back the next week, take out more and by the end of the second week the latest I would have had read the number of books of needed to finish and the library ladies always did not believe me. Then if one was suppose to read a number of fiction books and a number of non-fiction books I would end up arguing with them that the non- fiction books I had read were better than fiction books as provided true information not a story. – I usually won.
Tom Swift, Rick Brand (the wailing octopus), along with Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, Honey Bunch – with and without Norman, The Dana Girls, Donna someone, The Five Little Peppers, and lots of other books – all mine, all lost in my mom’s basement in Hurricane Sandy – sigh.