So…took the little Girlie to the library today, mostly because I was IN ARREARS with them. Arrears. God, I love that word.
Anyway, bad arrearage. More library fines than I’ve ever had: $20 (don’t ask). By the time I got there they had tacked on another four dollars, just for fun, I guess. I took the stuff back along time ago, I think in July. You’d think they’d be happy I am so supportive of the public library system. Now that I am a library student, the ALA should completely waive my membership dues, since I have been so arrearful to the library in the past.
I wanted to check more books out but I can’t find my wallet…I am having one of those days where everything’s a little unravelled.
Walletless, and out twenty-four and change, I decided to stick around and read some books to Girlie, instead of doing naptime reading at home. Frannie eventually decided to read on her own, and flipped through an extra-large picture book.
R-R-R-RIP. Shit. It’s okay, honey, I know it was an accident.
If I was alone, I could have just shoved the book down my pants and run out the door or flushed it down the toilet, of gutted the tatty stuffed lion (that I don’t want to touch but Girlie can’t get enough of) and made like the book was Luke Skywalker. But I couldn’t do any of that, for I must Set An Example.
“Umm, excuse me, my daughter ripped this book, and I know you have that special tape back here, and I’m really sorry.”
“Hmmph.” Glasses on a chain, the real deal.
“Do you want me to take this book to the front desk?”
“No no no, give it to me, alright.” Dismissed.
The whole library hates me. The ref librarian hates me because I let Girlie rip a book (I only looked away for a minute!), the Russian-speaking librarian hates me because I don’t speak Russian (the only time he smiles is when he checks out a Russian-speaking patron, seriously), and the young librarian hates me because she knows I am an arreariffic deadbeat patron.
How ironic that I will be joining their ranks in two short years. I’ll be fucking damned if I’m going to go the public route, though, and spend eight hours a day with that sourpuss look on my face like they do…bad for the complexion.
you will revolutionize the industry! out with the sour faced scrags! in with the sassy babes!
I just love that you said arreariffied and it made perfect sense.
SJ: You should really read “The Gold Bug Variations” by Richard Powers. In addition to posing some intriguing points about the pursuit of meaning within systems and featuring all sorts of Ahab-like obsession with intelligence within the dramatis personae, one of the major characters is a librarian. And this character is most definitely not a sourpuss in that pooh-pooh way too regularly depicted in countless movies, that frozen chairoschuro image, carbon dated to 1957, of pruny face, endless lineaments and utter spite that always frightened the bugfuck out of me growing up. (Hell, I’m still intimidated because they won’t let me check out tomes for a year or so. Three dollars a book because I wanted to keep it and read it, my ass! Read my credit card statements and observe the portrait of a book-obsessed man, so easy to buy, but dammit reading them all is a Ulysses-like notion.)
The point being: defy the stereotype. Powers’s librarian was working in a New York Public Library branch. Boo yah! And she was smart, carrying on a crazy sexual relationship, flirting intelligently with an older man, and committing tremendously cool activities completely against the portrait of Mr. 1957 Soulless Rummy Mofo, Shit, Boy, I’d Beat the Fuck Out of You If I Could Let My Language Slip Into the Guttural Like This But I Won’t So I’ll Stare At You and Convey the Same Fuck You Meaning Because I Haven’t Been Laid Since…Well…1957.
The point being: Be one of those librarians that a young lad can lust after. Be someone who encourages people to read and soak up knowledge. Deny yourself of this basic duty in two years and I will personally come to Seattle (or whatever other library you’re at) and beat some ecstatic zeal into your four ventricles! Go out there and do it, young lady! We need more sexy, uber-friendly librarians out there! We need you! America needs you!
PERSONAL email reply will follow this one, Ed. ;)
Um…It’s kind of hard to post after Ed but I’ll try. I just was struck by the ‘setting an example’ idea. Is it necessarily bad to teach your child: ‘When you break something…hide it and RUN!’ That could also be a useful skill for adulthood. But I guess she’ll learn that soon enough and in the meantime her kindergarten teachers and stuff will love her. I mean: The honesty thing is highly functional for children when confessing is cute. But I hope by the time she stops being cute you’ll teach her to be deceptive and sneaky!