Booking Through Thursday.

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from
the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library.
(There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when
I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you?
Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

My earliest memory of the library is fragmented, and it is of my first trip there I believe - getting my library card which I still have, with my mother and brother. I think I was around 7-9. I remember the pen not wanting to write on the back of the card, but I somehow got it to stop being stubborn and write my name on the back in my very kid-like handwriting. Even as I look at my signature on my old bent up card now I can't help but laugh to myself at the ordeal and the memory of it. I remember being amazed and not even knowing where to start looking in the kid section for something to look at. I wasn't actually much of a reader when I was a child. I preferred animal books with loads of pictures, and Garfield comic books. And oh the board games. I couldn't believe the library had board games (that I didn't have at home) that you could sit there and play quietly with with someone. And those little cushion-chairs on the floor by the big window, for kids to sit in and read in. I didn't get to sit in them often though, because they were almost always taken.

I do remember this one strange thing that only happened to me there once, there was a little girl younger than I was, who kept following me around and calling me Christina. I had never seen her anywhere before and my name certainly isn't Christina. I told her I wasn't Christina but I guess either she didn't hear or me or just ignored me. I just tried my best to avoid her and smile as if to say "okay, whatever, go away," because my mother was not raising a rude child.

After a while we stopped going to the library because of a full schedule and just plain tiredness on my parents side. But when I was 18 I started going again. During that library absence period we had moved a little closer to the library so I could walk there. I loved walking to the library. but I didn't get to too often because my family didn't like it, because they were being too protective, but I can't blame them for that. It was a lovely walk though. There was one particular fragrant house I loved walking by, because it was always surrounded by flowers. With all the plants it was beautiful to look at and I looked forward on my walk to going by it slowly and drinking it in with my eyes. Lovely.

I never really had any bad experiences at the library, except for that one librarian who always seemed to have something rammed up her backside. I always wondered what she was doing working in a place with children. I was not a child while she was there though, It was when I started going back after I turned 18. No matter how much I smiled and tried to stay pleasant she still got on my nerves with her rudeness. Oh well though. I don't have to deal with dreading of getting her at checkout anymore because my family and I have moved recently. (Last year.) My new library is smaller, but much more pleasant feeling and the librarians are nicer. One even knows me by name already. :p This pleases me to no end because it never happened at the old library. But I must admit I'm too shy to come right out and ask her name since she learned mine. Though I have been fishing for a moment to do so. She is very friendly and always smiling, it seems a shame not even to know her name.

Anyhoo, those are my worth remembering times of the library. Probably boring to everyone else, but I like thinking about them. Even about the rude librarian, because she makes me appreciate these nicer ones. LOL.