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Weekend Assignment #318: Library Books
Recently, it was discovered that George Washington had forgotten to return some books he had checked out of his local library. They were only 221 years late, mind you, but late all the same. How about you? Have you ever checked out a library book and forgot to return it? Tell us about your experiences with checking out, returning, or forgetting to return, books to the library.
Extra Credit: Tell us about the last book you checked out of the library.
If I suddenly, for some insane reason, started being hunted by a hired killer, I’d be an easy target. He’d have to cover only two places, really. The first would be my house. The second would be the local library.
Some men go to the track to get their fix. Some men go to bars. I go to the library. Because unlike some men, I am a book addict. I fully admit this. I worked in bookstores for close to fifteen years, and it was kind of like being an alcoholic and working in a pub. I tend to think that if I won the lottery, I’d have to buy an abandoned Borders or Wal-Mart to put them all in. When I was single, if you’d given me a choice between a million dollars and being able to have every book I’ve ever wanted to read, I’d have had to think long and hard about the choice.
I remember seeing the Burgess Meredith episode of the “Twilight Zone”, the one where he’s survived the apocalypse ,and can read all the books, but breaks his glasses. I remeber seeing it and thinking, “Ok, why doesn’t he havea backup pair?” I don’t know a single glasses wearer over thrity who doesn’t have one. The second was, “Why doesn’t he just hold the book closer?” The piece did give me nightmares for weeks though.
I love libraries. I love the idea of going in and having access to books I won’t see in bookstores usually, and being able to try out new authors I’ve never heard of. I also have a list of over forty authors I read on a regular basis, who come out with a book or two a year. You can imagine how bad this would be for our finances if I didn’t have library access. You can say, you can get them online, but I’m sorry , no. At least with libraries I know someone has gotten paid for their work, in some way. And I love the idea of using tax dollars for such a blatantly socialist enterprise. (Take that, Glenn Beck!)(Don’t think your town has any homeless? Visit your local library in the middle of the afternoon in the summer,or first thing in the morning in the winter. The ones who aren’t carting a child are probably them.
One of the best ways I support my local libraries are late fees. I have a four year old, and keeping track of what book has gone where is sometimes taxing. But all her fines fail at the glory of my longest checkout ever.
I was a shy eight year old in 1978, when I saw it sitting on the shelf. Star Wars, the movie novelization by George Lucas( I later learned it was actually written by Alan Dean Foster, creator of the best Star Wars novel ever, Splinter of the Mind’s eye). I took it home, and devoured it in two days. When did I return it?
1996.
Yes, it took me eighteen years to return a library book. I don’t know why, really. We moved twenty miles away in 1979, but it was in the same library system. I think me and my family were horrified at the fine we’d be paying. The library charged ten cents a day, so we were accumulating close to forty dollars a year in fines. My college years and high school years came and went, and with them ,serious poverty. The library never tried to find us, so maybe they just chalked it up as a loss. I used to show it to girls to impress them. Yeah, I’m so bad I steal library books. Considering my outrage at people who steal books from the library before I can read them, it’s kind of ironic.
So along comes 1996, and I find myself couch surfing(A situation I spent most of the 90’s in) and trying to divest myself of stuff. So I take the bus to the library and get the head guy, and nervously explain I’d like to give the book back. After I plead mercy, and asking if there’s a payment plan, he smiles and says I can keep the book.
Say what?
It seems the library updated their computers in 1990, and lost a good deal of thier records in the process. They have no record of my book, or even of my having a card.I can have new one if I have ID, he says. I fish it out and get my new card, and go off into the land of happy library consumer, right?
Wrong.
Flash forward two years, and I am being escorted out of the Waukegan library, and told never to come back. Waukegan’s is the first library I am told I can’t check out books from, but sadly, it isn’t the last.(The other is Kenosha, but that story involves stepdaughters and Celine Dion autobiographies, so the less said about that, the better) I am led out after yelling and screaming at the same head librarian. He had just told me that even though I had returned some books very late, and had actually had returned them,I was going to still pay the full price of the books to get my library card reinstated. I told him this was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, and then followed up with disparaging remarks about his parenthood and suggestions of biologically impossible activities. And it went downhill from there.
I love libraries, and I hate to do them wrong. If you like libraries, you should go through your funds and give them some, because libraries all across this country are really hurting. And because librarians got parts of the Patriot Act ruled as unconstitutional, and fight for your rights. And if you have to give funds by returning books late,that’s ok, unless I’m next in the hold queue. And may your gods help you if it’s the new Jim Butcher or Charlaine Harris.
Extra Credit: I just checked out “Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior” by Richard Marcinko. Yes, you geeks, I know his video game sucked. But this is a great motivational and business guide.
