March 31, 2011
Ask a law librarian
Tall, blond man walks out of an L.L. Bean catalog and into the library: “I need to correct the father’s name on my son’s birth certificate.”
Librarian: “Is it just a misspelling, or a different person?”
Tall Blonde: “I’m Robert Hamilton,* but the birth certificate says Buck Hamilton.”
Librarian: “So uh, was this a DNA testing type situation with Buck?”
Tall Blonde: “Well, it’s complicated. Buck was my alter identity for about 10 years while I was doing all the crimes I committed. And Buck is on the birth certificate. But now Buck is dead.”
Librarian (thinking well I be gawddamn, this is a new one): “Well it sounds like Buck needed to been doin’ a name change. I mean, because you’re sayin’ the issue is not your son’s name. Normally they change the father’s name on a birth certificate because there’s two people and one name on the birth certificate. Yer sayin’ there’s one person and two names.”
Tall Blonde: “I’ve settled everything else. This is the last thing I need to take care of. I don’t know how I would go about it.”
Librarian: “I don’t know either. The usual situation involves paternity. Have you ever taken a paternity test?”
Tall Blonde: “I would be willing to do that. I could do that.”
Librarian: “Here’s all the papers.”
Tall Blonde: “Is there any place in these papers where Buck would need to sign?”
*The names have been changed because, you know.
comments
Leave a Reply
Holy. Shit.
uh-huh
How would you write a story better than that. Third documentary. Libraries.
It’s funny you say that, because just this week at our staff meeting, the group asked me please to write down all of the funny stories we’ve told, lest they be lost. People would be amazed at the stuff that goes on in libraries.
I hope that the midget who was into conspiracy theories is still at that one library where I worked for a while.
Oh, so do I. If not, though, the stories are still there.
“I don’t think anymore. I know.” She said.
Also, the southern Illinois warlock enraged over the rare book librarian’s judgment that he did not have a valid research reason for handling a fragile old publication of Aleister Crowley’s.
And the day I met the man who designed the Hoover Dam.
And the library employee who confronted the Oxford-educated head of the special collections department:
“Are you [Alicia Jones's] supervisor?”
“Yes, I am.”
“She come down to interlibrary loan and call me a ho!”
“Buck Hamilton” is way too good a name to be fake
Thank you, Joel. I feel very proud.
See, the thing is, people don’t hear about what goes on in libraries because we have all of this professional ethical shit we adhere to, like privacy and respect and all. Hell, I wrote some of the ethical shit that people adhere to. But that shouldn’t mean we can’t tell stories.
If someone were to read the site and recognize their conversation, would they have grounds for a complaint? Assuming the names were all buckhamiltonated?
Well, I talked that over with the law librarian before I started this series, and she thinks not. And she’s a lawyer (not to mention a law librarian), so she should know.
I just don’t want you getting in trouble if someone googles “County Clork”
I’m a honey badger.
I’m counting down until Deron’s library doc.
So, Cindy, you asked a law librarian about Ask a Law Librarian?
Yep. Kind of like a small Thomas Kinkade planter inside a big one.
Russian nesting dolls.