Bit of Ivory

For those of you who don’t know, I work at the Humanities/Religion reference desk at my college library. So today I was talking with my two supervisors and the other student reference assistant about various subjects, which (as it often does at BYU) lead to dating, which is not really a field I’ve had much experience in lately. My supervisor then began a topic we have discussed before: a certain patron named Derek.

Now, Derek and I have done a bit of what you might call flirting, but not really. When I was working 8 hour days over the spring and summer terms, he used to come up to the 5th floor practically every day. At first I thought I knew him from high school, but I think it’s just because I saw him so often. He would tell me “hi” and joke about how I always seemed to be there, and I would tell him “hi” and do the same back. When fall semester came around we still saw each other quite often. I did some snooping after he came to the desk to check out one of our desk copies of the MLA style manual, and I found out his last name (which I can’t remember anymore, of course) and where he was from (which I can’t remember anymore either).

Anyway, I haven’t seen him a whole lot lately because he changed his major and hasn’t come to the 5th floor so often. Mary (my supervisor) caught me talking with him one day and has since told me two or three times that I should ask him out. I don’t really do that very much anymore, having asked guys out a few too many times without having any of them return the gesture. But Joanne (my other supervisor) had never heard about this particular patron, so we were talking about him. It just so happened that I was down on the 4th floor fixing a jam in the copier (we look after that copier as the closest reference desk) and he walked by, so I told Mary I’d seen him just that day. We were still talking about him when I glanced over–and saw him walking our way. Yikes.

Now don’t get me wrong. Derek is a nice guy, from all I can tell, and if he asked me out I’d probably say yes. But he’s never shown any interest in doing so.

Anyway,he said “Hi, again,” and started walking past, but then he stopped, turned around, and came back to ask me a question. I showed him a few sources that would help him out nicely, and he said “Emily, you’ve saved me again.” I couldn’t really stand there and watch him look stuff up, so I went back to the desk. Mary was saying “you should have stayed over there!” and Joanne was saying “Go and ask him if that was helpful! It’s called following up!” and Richard (the other student assistant) offered to get up and tell him to ask me out, which of course I flatly refused. Shortly thereafter Derek left, which made Mary think that he’d made up the question just to have a chance to talk to me.

Mary also now thinks that we need to talk about him more so he’ll come back more often, and has threatened to tell him to ask me out next time I see him.

Yikes.

In other news, today’s floral design lab was fun. We did Oriental arrangements. I’ve got 3 irises, a spider mum, a few sprigs of heather, a snake tail/horse grass, some statice, ming fern and galax leaves in mine. I don’t have any film in my camera at the moment, so I don’t know how I’ll take a picture. Maybe I’ll borrow the digital camera of one of my friends in the complex. Or I guess I could just buy more film.