I love the library. I also hate the library.
We are blessed here in Livingston with a wonderful library--one of the original Carnegie libraries, built in 1904:
"There were only a few public libraries in the world in 1881 when Andrew Carnegie began to promote the establishment of free public libraries to make a means of self-education available to the nation’s changing workforce. He eventually spent over $56 million to build 2,509 libraries throughout the English-speaking world."
So thank you, Andrew Carnegie, whose name was in my youth pronounced CAR-nuh-ghee but has now morphed to car-NAY-ghee for no reason I can discern.
The Livingston library opened a very nice new addition shortly after we moved here, and we have wiled away many an hour in its children's room. Unfortunately, I have also spent many unhappy hours wondering where in the hell a book that we checked out has disappeared to. Most recently we have weathered the disappearance of an Eric Carle book that we checked out for Emerson. I suspect she has hidden it to prevent our returning it. Frankly, I didn't think it was that good. The character development was weak and the surprise ending? Well, let's just say that O. Henry would not have been impressed. But she loved it, we lost it, and now we will end up buying a new copy for the library.
I have been reminded of this parental failing each and every morning via a new library service whereby they send you a helpful email reminder. "ITEM OVERDUE!" the email subject line reads, and I sink lower in my chair and hit the delete button as fast as I can.
I try to be a responsible library consumer. I really do. And in my life I've only ever had to buy one book for a library because I lost it. But that's mainly dumb luck. One day I came upstairs to the checkout desk to find two librarians talking about the tragedy of a book that had been found facedown in the gutter. It was a children's book about ducks. "Who would do such a thing?" I thought to myself. "Probably teenagers attacking some defenseless child for his lunch money." Turned out that the last person to check out the book was...me. It had fallen out of my stroller when I was packing it up and heading home. I tried to kill the duckie book. They've never really looked at me the same way.
My cred was not at all enhanced when I showed up a couple of months back to pay for a book that Connery had checked out that I was sure I had lost. "Nope," the same librarian said. "Someone turned that in after it was left at a coffee shop." *ulp* Nice work, mom.
And just as I was finishing up this post? Chip bounded in to the office holding that Eric Carle book. It had been buried under some suitcases in our bedroom. All's well that ends well or just another reason why I should stick to reading books at the library? Could be difficult with the novels, but it's probably safer.