CoffeeBear.net

Public Library (Revisited)

Posted by Mark | Filed under Life

I’d fin­ished read­ing all the books and lis­ten­ing to the CD, I bor­rowed from the library dur­ing my pre­vi­ous visit. So last night, I went back to return all of it and get more. After drop­ping off my returns at the cir­cu­la­tion desk (slightly ham­pered by an old lady’s cane hang­ing down over the return slot), I wan­dered over into the fic­tion sec­tion to look for Tem­ple of the Winds (Sword of Truth, Book 4). I first started down the wrong aisle (Good­kind, not Jor­dan you dolt!) but man­aged to even­tu­ally get myself sorted out and going down the right one.

I got about halfway down the aisle and started to walk around a young lady look­ing at the shelves when I real­ized she was stand­ing directly in front of the sec­tion I wanted. I excused myself and started look­ing for Tem­ple of the Winds but it was not to be found. I decided to go ahead and grab a cou­ple of the fol­low­ing books (SotF, FotF and tPoC). As I was turn­ing to leave the aisle, the young lady held up a book (WFS) asked me if it was the first book in the series and if it was any good. I reas­sured her that it was both the first book and an enter­tain­ing read. She then asked if the rest of the series was any good. I replied that of what I’d read (the first 3 books) WFS is the best.

This seemed to dis­ap­point her some­what and I was going to explain that the other books weren’t bad, when a scruffy look­ing fel­low walked up to me ask­ing for help. He told me that he works for the car­ni­val¹ and then went on to explain that he’s not famil­iar with the Coralville library. I tried to tell him that I wasn’t really famil­iar with it either² but he inter­rupted me say­ing that he could just tell that I knew libraries and could help him locate a book by Dean Koontz called “Fire­ball” (he thought). Since the young lady didn’t appear to want to talk any fur­ther and I knew Mr. Koontz’s books would just be an aisle or two over; I helped the scruffy guy to find the right section.

When I recounted this story to my wife later that night; she didn’t seem to under­stand how odd an expe­ri­ence this was for me. After all, I’m 6 foot 5 inches tall and most peo­ple don’t talk to me unless they already know me. To me the whole trip to the library had been sur­real; but as I started to explain this to her, she inter­rupted and said…

Oh honey, you just look like a book nerd.

*sigh*

¹ Coralville brings in a small car­ni­val every year as part of our 4th of July cel­e­bra­tions.
² This only being my 2nd visit to check books in prob­a­bly 6 months to a year.

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