I haven’t abandoned my blog, but I have been v. b.z. and v. d.pressed. I will make a full comeback next week, but for now, here is a taste to whet your appetite.
MY DORKY DREAM
I am at the Jefferson Madison Downtown Regional Library, which will always be my favorite local library even though its employees occasionally play the game of “Lose the books Wistar returns and then hire a collection agency to send her scary invoices for $90.” I’m trying to make conversation with the librarians, but they are ignoring me. “Hey guys,” I say. “Did you see Art Garfunkel’s reading list in this week’s New Yorker? Who would have guessed?” Then I go looking for Martin Amis’s novel Money. But the fiction section isn’t where it used to be on the main floor! The fiction section is up three flights of stairs, and to get there I have to walk through a gift shop selling cheap jewelry and across a meditation area with chlorinated, 50-meter reflecting pools. And I keep cursing at all the people drinking Mocha Frappiatos and pawing through fashion magazines. “Shit,” I say. “Where are all the f-ing books?” Then a hot guy opens an unmarked door beside the coin-operated carousel and I see a sign for Fiction A-Am, and I am home.
Now who’s a bigger nerd, me or Art Garfunkel?
The library? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve returned a book and it still shows up on my record. If you can remember which branch you returned your book to, you can probably find it on the shelf. I’ve found several of my “missing” books this way.
Probably Art Garfunkel will always be a bigger nerd, based on his hair and that he let ‘Simon and Garfunkel’ go.
You are cute. That is all.
Ms. Crabstick,
You are not the first person who has corroborated my suspicion that the Downtown library sucks big time at checking in books. Like you suggest, I eventually found the “missing” books on the shelf and showed them to the head librarian. She refunded my $90 and the library and I were friends again. But I will never be friends with the guy on the Downtown branch mezzanine who checks people into the public computers. He is just plain mean.
Ummmmmmm. I need to begin to be a library person. Help. I want to love it. I really do. Can we have a library date and you can show me the inner workings of the grown up section? Not a come on! I only know the children’s section, because that is the last time I had a library card. Please, help.
This sounds like fun. We will start by reading children’s books to the homeless men at the downtown branch until they spit on us. Then we will tear pages from Cosmo. Then you will truly know the wonders of the public library.
The BBF doesn’t use the library either, and it drives me crazy. I will start borrowing inappropriate books for you guys. The library will win you over eventually. It always does.
For SOME reason I initially did not read that this was a dream. So for about a day I was under the impression that the Charlottesville area library was
a) A corporate sellout (giftshop!?)
b) Very classy (pools…)
c) A place I’d like to visit (what do they sell in the giftshop? I love book tchotchkes! Little glass novels? Funny buttons about reading? Dorky T-shirts?)
The unmarked door thing didn’t seem odd to me though.
P.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchotchke
Is it a dream? Is it reality? Is it stupid? Is it a seaside souvenir shop? Am I drunk? Am I about to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Ys.