TOE FINGER GUY in Adventures From Prison

    We had to give Toe-Finger a time-out last week. He has been caught hoarding our books. Remember the Anita Blake books he wanted? Well he started coming in at night when I wasn’t working and checking them out four books at a time until he had all 20+ of them. Nobody noticed until I went to the shelf to grab one for a friend and saw they were all gone. They are never all gone. Suspicious I checked the card catalog to see who had them and low and behold it was toe-finger guy! So the next time he shows up at the library one of my co-workers refused to let him check anything out until he returned some of the ones he had. The guy shows up an hour later with ~no joke ~ about 40 of our library books! So, with our bosses permission, we told him he couldn’t get anything for a week.
    So this week we have it set up that he can only checkout the same number of books he returns. It’s been working well but has had some unexpected consequences. You see in punishing him we paid attention to him, so now he’s convinced we are his buddies. It would be kind of sad if he wasn’t so much like a character from a Rob Zombie movie. Seriously, this guy could have fit right in with the cast of House of 1000 Corpses – only then he’d have to figure out how to work a chainsaw with his toe-hand thing, which definitely has to be in violation of some sort of safety law, even in Hollywood.
    Anyway, the other day he decided he wanted a funny book. I was helping another person so he went up to my friend, Jay – who has no patience for the guy – and told him, “I want Jeff Foxworthy.”
    “Too much information, man,” Jay says in his usual sarcastic manner.
    “What? Oh no, no. A book, I want a book.”
    “I see, what kind?”
    “A Redneck book,” Toe-finger said.
    “Obviously,” Jay said. At this point I nearly start laughing.
    “Huh?”
    “Never mind, look in the Non-Fiction catalog under 817.” Jay slides him the catalog and starts helping someone else.
    After a minute, Toe-Finger blurts out excitedly. “I found it! 817. Now what?”
    We both stop and look at him. “Really?”
    Jay looks at me and I shake my head, “He’s all yours, buddy.”
    Jay sighs and explains that Toe-Finger needs to look under Foxworthy and tell him what books he wants.
    “Oh, okay. Sorry, never used a library before coming to prison.”
    “Shocker,” Jay whispers to me.
    Toe-Finger manages his task and Jay retrieves the books. At this point we’ve gotten pretty busy, so Jay and I are running around like crazy. Toe-Finger, however, is not done with Jay.
    “Hey I got one!” he says loudly.
    Jay, who is in the middle of a conversation ignores him.
    “Hey, I got a good one,” Toe-Finger tries again, louder.
    “Hang on,” Jay tells the guy he’s helping and walks back to Toe-finger. “What?”
    “I got a Redneck joke they should put in here,” he said proudly and holds up his book.
    “That’s nice,” Jay said starting to turn away.
    “You might be a Redneck if you work in a Federal Prison.”
    A look of annoyed disbelief fit only on a condemned man who has just learned he’s won a million dollars, crosses Jay’s face.
    I laugh.
    Toe-Finger looks at me and grins, “Good one ain’t it?”
    “You have no idea,” I say and walk away while Jay returns to the man he was helping, muttering under his breath things best not written.