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“Where is the Man I Came in With?”
We have several homes for mentally handicapped adults that make weekly trips to the library. We know several of them by name and we will chat with them when they come to the front desk. One fellow always wants to know what we had for supper last night.
One day an obviously mentally handicapped man came into the library. We didn't see him come in with anyone, and no one approached him, while we were observing him, that seemed to be with him. He started out by coming up to various members of the staff, putting out his hand to shake and saying, "Hi." Then he'd follow several staff members who were out on the floor very closely. He got distracted by a little girl, went to her to shake her hand and say "Hi," and then he started following her around. One of the staff members came to me and let me know what was going on. I went up to him and asked him if he was with anyone. He immediately withdrew into a shell and began petting his stuffed animals he was carrying and eventually began to act distressed. I asked him if he wanted to sit down. He did so and just followed people with his eyes for awhile, but after awhile he got up and began his introductions and following behavior again.
I hated to do it, but I had to call the police to come pick him up and take him home. We couldn't follow him everywhere, and if he didn't have a responsible adult with him to control his actions, we couldn't take a chance that he wouldn't frighten any of our patrons, especially the children.
Three hours later I was summoned to the desk. There was a woman there screaming at the staff "Where is the man that came in with me?" After asking her a few questions I realized that she was the "caretaker" of the man we had had the police take home. When I told her what we had done, she was livid with rage. I asked her where she had been during all the time we had been dealing with him that she hadn't seen any of it, and hadn't even seen the police come in and take him away. She was silent. She turned around and stalked out of the library. One of the staff came up to me then and said that they had observed her sleeping on one of our sofas in the magazine area. She had had quite a long nap. I hope that when she got back to the institution they let her go for negligence.