The Library
The library is my vice. I reserve books online with the ease of “buy it now,” but better. I check out books faster than I can consume them, The Feminine Mystique, The Storyteller’s Death, The Emigrants.
I am generously granted 3 weeks to read—or look at—each one. I challenge myself to return them in time, read cover to cover. But sometimes, I have to renew, filling me with shame and anxiety. I imagine a crowd of impatient members shaking their fists at the librarian like a group of disgruntled travelers at an airline agent. ”We must have our copy of My Mother/my self immediately! We cannot wait any longer,” they shout.
It’s not right to put her in the center of that chaos, so I must, with all my strength avoid the dreaded “renewal” button. There’s nothing worse, I imagine, than making a reader wait and wait for a book some lazy woman hoards for weeks at a time—not even a page yet turned!
And what if someone new to the library, someone who has no room left on her shelves to add another book, signs up for a card, only to find the book she seeks is checked out. “Well,” she thinks. “I suppose I can wait a week or two for the latest Febos,” only to find it’s still on loan an entire year later! Will she lose faith in the library? Will she ever try another title, will she ever come back?
It’ll be my fault. I have to read faster than I ever have before, thousands of pages turned by the dried skin of my weary world champion fingertips.
I cannot let the swarm of angry library-goers, or our new still uninitiated member, down. I must read this book, and I must return it early.