Tags

, , ,

If I want to spend time in the library of my childhood, I’ll have to commit a crime; because that’s my best shot of getting in.  The building that once held my beloved Encyclopedia Brown mysteries is now home to the city’s police department instead.  It wouldn’t, however, be the first time I’d been held captive in that building.

The visit began harmlessly, as most library visits do (and should).  I was there to beat all the other kids competing participating in the summer reading program.  And my grandmother, an unabashed book junkie, was there to get her theology fix.  Following a brief visit to the children’s section in the musty, alphabet-carpeted basement, I sat as instructed by my grandmother in a chair among grown-up books while she meandered to Dewey Decimal class 211, Natural Theology- Concepts of God.

Those who know my grandmother know she can spend more time browsing books than most people can spend sleeping, or even breathing.  And so I sat in that chair for many minutes hours.

If you make a young child sit in one chair long enough, oh say two hours, she will find something about the chair other than reading in it to amuse herself.  If that chair happens to be riddled with hundreds of finger-sized holes, there’s a good chance she’s going to stick her finger in one of them—especially if that child is me.

Like the child who pulled the proverbial cat’s tail, I quickly realized the error of my ways.   Within seconds my finger began turning red, then an alarming shade of oxygen-deprived purple.

I didn’t want to get in trouble for sticking my finger in a chair, but my aversion to amputation trumped my fear of Grandma’s censure.  And so I called out for my grandmother.  She tugged and coaxed to no avail, and then she called for reinforcements in the way of a reference librarian.

With a dollop of hand lotion, the librarian successfully liberated my by-then swollen finger.  And that’s how I learned first-hand never to place my fingers in anything other than gloves…or cookie dough.

Several years later the city built a new library—furnished with, to my relief, new chairs.  Little did I know I was about to encounter something even more nefarious than a chair doubling as a Chinese finger trap.

That something was a crush on a boy from my algebra class who had aqua-blue eyes in the manner of Bradley Cooper; an LA Raiders coat; and—at all times—a girlfriend (or two.)  He also had issues with solving for x and y—and, being the nerd opportunist I was—I offered to fix those issues.  Week after week, we met in the library to solve quadratic equations and graph linear inequalities.

Week after week, I looked deep into those blue eyes hoping he’d see me as more than just a tutor and ditch his girlfriend(s) for me.  Around the time I ditched my headgear and first set of braces (about a year later), he did; but not mutually exclusive of other girls vying for his attention.  And that’s how I learned, over the course of a year, to beware of boys who struggle solving for x and y.

My library trips these days are tame (and crush free) by comparison.  I check out movies, music, and—when I’m competing participating in the summer reading program —oodles of books.  I amble down aisles, looking at spines and flipping through magazines, for more time than some people sleep.

And I content myself with learning the rest of everything I need to know the easy way—by reading Dewey decimalized books from the comfort of a solid backed-chair.

Advertisement