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I'm in bad need of new bras. I'm down to one that's wearable, and I'm using that word in the loosest sense. This poor bra ... it's tired. It's tired and abused and so stretched beyond its limit that the strap in the back keeps trying to escape through the neckhole of my shirt. I think the reason I'm so damn tired all the time isn't because I've contracted the Black Death; it's because I spend roughly 6 hours a day in perpetual motion, trying to wrangle this renagade brassaire back onto my body. It's exhausting.

When you visualize the events in this post, don't forget that through everything, I'm constantly fiddling with my bra.

On to the library. Clara Jane's a veteran of storytime. Her last storytime experience? Two weeks ago, we piled into the county library headquarters with roughly 100 other toddlers to see a live appearance by Franklin.

Now, I implore you ... does this look like a kid who has any trouble with storytime?

That's Clara Jane on the right, shortly after she sprinted away from me shrieking, "Hey Frank-a-lin!", but before she insisted on exchanging high-fives with him. After chattering non-stop with her favorite turtle-suited person, she heaped herself on the floor with a pile of crayons - some blatantly pilfered from the gaggle of little boys next to us - to capture her Franklin experience on paper while it was fresh on her mind.

Clara Jane has no fear when it comes to costumed characters, to the degree that I'm a little concerned about her developing a fetish. But do you know what library fixture scares the fuck out of her? Crazy Old Library Lady, that's who.

Things started out just fine, as all library trips do. My kid adores the library. Or did. I'm not so sure she feels the same anymore, as her sanctuary of books has become a house of horrors. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

Today's election day, and the library we visited today was a polling place for one of the 3,927 St. Louis-area municipalities that are electing mayors. At first I wasn't thrilled, because I was going to have to deal with pamphleting electioneers 26 feet away from the entrance, barraging me with propoganda. However, they were all quite nice and understanding when I explained that this wasn't our polling place and we had bigger fish to fry. Or read about frying.

The problem ceated by election day: the polling place was set up in the meeting room usually used for storytime. Not a problem. As Clara Jane shared an alphabet book with a little girl named Isabella, her mom told me that, when storytime's displaced, they have it in the teen area and it's great and fabulous and Miss Sandra hung the moon and stars. Wonderful.

Another little girl, accompanied by her grandmother, were sitting at a table in the teen room when we made our way to storytime. At the next table, another older woman, flipping the pages of her book with such agitation that I wondered if perhaps the characters were telling her horrible, awful things about her mother. Please don't let this be Miss Sandra, I thought. Because whatever this woman's reading, I don't think I want her reading it to my kid.

Clara Jane and the other little girl chattered, as two-year-olds do. They remained on our laps, giggling and talking. I fidgeted with my bra. Grandma smiled adoringly at the girls. Crazy Old Library Lady Who Best Not Be Miss Sandra flipped pages, turned to us and barked, "This is supposed to be a silent area. Get the kids out of here."

Both girls fell silent, inately aware that suddenly, their silence was required. Perhaps their lives depended on it.

I stopped tugging my strap so as to look at least a little reasonable. "Actually, storytime is starting in here in a few minutes."

"This isn't the storytime area! They don't hold storytime in here! This is a silent area and I came in here for peace and quiet! I need peace and quiet for what I'm doing! This is not the storytime room and you need to leave!"

I prepared to hand Clara Jane to the grandmother, whip off my bra, and use it to truss and bind the woman who was having such a screaming, flailing meltdown in her silent area that she was rapidly turning into a very loud, very slimy puddle on the floor. Just then, a plump woman with a soft salt-and-pepper pageboy entered the room, wheeling a cart filled with books, crayons, monkey puppets and an autoharp. "It's storytime!" she chirped in the general direction of the molten petrolium product that continued to shriek, "You're welcome to stay, if you'd like!"

The puddle yorped in the new woman's direction, absorbed her reading materials into her oil flow, and slithered out of her most-decidedly non-silent area.

I think she took a little of Clara Jane's spirit with her. This child - who's been social since the day she was born, who loves live music, and storytime and coloring, and being around other similarly-inclined kids - would not allow me to put her down. When I did, she sobbed as if I was going to leave her in The Bad Vibes Room to be raised by whatever crazy old person happened by next.

I spent the entire 45 minutes of storytime on my knees, Clara Jane adhered to my torso. If her feet got within three inches of the floor, she'd fire up the tears once again. Nothing assured her that everything was okay. Not the gentle melody of the autoharp and Miss Sandra's sweet voice. Not the giggles of the other kids. Not the stories about shoes and the finger puppets based on Eileen Christelow's Five Little Monkeys, who happen to be Clara Jane's favorite monkeys in the whole wide world. She would calm when she was pressed against me with both of my arms wrapped tight around her, but if my muscles fatigued and her feet came within the dreaded three inches of the floor, she'd cry, legs peddling like a frantic duck, kicking my thighs and stomach as her fingers dug into my shoulders, begging me to take her home.

It's really hard to fidget with a renegade brassaire in such a situation.

I don't expect everyone to adore my child, or to be charmed by her every chatter and shriek. Kids in public places can be irritating; I'm the first to admit that. But Jesus. What kind of person has a screaming hissy fit of such magnitude that it leaves a normally gregarious kid so terrified she can't unlatch from her mother?

I think that woman truly did need some peace and quiet, perhaps the kind provided by solitary confinement at one of the area's mental health facilities.

Maybe I should have given in to Clara Jane's pleas to leave, but what would that teach her? That it's okay to let a bully ruin something that is rightfully hers? I hate that the ire of one unhinged person has the possibility of changing how we go about our lives. My reaction - I quit. I'm sick to death of dealing with people and I just don't want to do it anymore. I'm exhausted and I don't need this. Most importantly, I don't want Clara Jane to deal with this. I want her to believe that people are good and have her best interests at heart for as long as possible. I don't want one crazy old bat at the library to steal that part of her innocence. I don't want the storytimes that she's loved so much to have any shadow of fear. But now, they might, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Clara Jane's going to learn about the meanness in this world, and I don't get to choose when or how.

I'm going to learn about the meanness in me. In the past, the sight of such a person - old and alone, miserable and angry - would have made something in my heart hurt. I would hurt for whatever horrible hurt had brought such misery into being. But today, I felt no sympathy, no "there but for the grace of God go I". All I felt was the overwhelming desire to strike this person so that she might hurt as much as she hurt my child.