The thing about libraries is that nobody takes advantage of them anymore.
People nowadays ask themselves, "Why would I leave the comfort of my cramped, low lighting, zero air flow, too high/low temperature, fumigation-needed, and limited wifi and bandwidth room?" Well, I think you just answered your own question. But hold the phone. (Or mouse/keyboard/tablet/psychic prowess, whichever you use to access your daily F.U.C.K.) Let me rewind a bit.
Like any normal day, I decided to take the subway downtown to visit the University of Toronto and its library.
... who am I kidding? Do I ever go out? Excuse me? What is this Vitamin D producing, warmth inducing, depression reducing "sun" you speak of? As if an Internet mole such as I would ever venture out in the open outside, let alone take the subway to a place I've never been before...
Ok ok, that's not me either. Doesn't help that A.W. (boyfriend... names in general will be initialized for privacy's sake) has a car. And is also planning on going to the University of Toronto come September. Which would make everything come together. So now you know; that's why libraries are on the mind.
When I was younger, I lived down tbe street from our local public library. I basically lived there: after school, on weekends, and any time I had free you could find me there. (I had no friends don't judge me... just kidding, over protective Asian parents made sure I never got to go to friends' houses on weekdays) With the free wifi, a cooling air flow system called an AC (Asian parents strike again... too expensive to run ours for very long), lots of books, and vending machines for the rare hunger pang, I was set.
Did I mention the free wifi? Then again my wifi privileges were... iffy back then so the friendly solace of unlimited usage was a godsend back in the day. And don't even get me started on the button on the vending machine that gave you free pop. (Unfortunately fixed now)
So of course, when I turned the age at which you can't really hold a real job but your parents start refusing to pay for a lot of things, I looked to the library for a job. And I got one! Little did I know about the secrets that go on in the library. Some were good, some were ridiculous, but others were disgusting. Take your pick! Here's a couple (if you've managed to get this far without tl;dr-ing that is).
1. Homeless people.
Maybe I was just unobservant. Maybe it was my childhood innocence assuming that any old people with long unkept hair/beards with dirty clothes and a bag full of random stuff were just adventurers travelling through our little town. But wow. The library is the homeless hotspot. Not that I mind of course; I'd rather them be inside than outside especially during hot summer days and cold winter evenings. But when I worked there, I started to recognize them. And that's not a good sign. Because that means they'll recognize you too.
2. Wtf? What the actual...?
Some weird shit (apologies for the language but it's appropriate for the location of this point) goes on in the bathrooms. One shift, I had to take a quick leak, only to discover that someone had left a loaf of bread on the top of the toilet paper dispenser in one of the stalls. An entire loaf of bread. BREAD. What??? I was legitimately stunned, thoughts such as "What's the employee protocol for this?" or "Who brings bread into the washroom... and forgets about it??" or even "I guess someone was just loafing around...". Needless to say, that loaf had been bread astray.
3. Old employees. Really old.
So I still remember my memories of all the nice granny librarians who would check out my books for me and would be quite nice to me. Clearly the nice ones stay at circulation while the not-so-nice ones stay behind the scenes. I swear, there would always be one or two of them lurking behind a corner while I was shelving books, just ready to pounce if I shelved a book wrong or waved hello to someone (because heaven forbid if I help someone find a book... because that wasn't allowed either). Didn't hurt that a couple of them looked like lemon addicts who had just discovered limes.
...And the list goes on but I don't think anyone has the patience or the time to read all of this anyways; kudos to you if you made it this far... comment below with your favourite book if you got this far. But that's my library experience in a nutshell. I can imagine how many different experiences I would've had if I worked a different position, like circulation; I'm sure there's a healthy proportion of library patrons that are essentially clinically insane. It would explain the bread.
This was your daily F.U.C.K. for Thursday, July 25th. Literacy is an opportunity that shouldn't be wasted; let's flip another page in our lives and be authors to be remembered for our generation's next chapter.
