Check Me Out

One of the downsides of teaching at a new school is the lack of books. Though I have wanted to teach a classic novel since the start, we have no literature available to us aside from textbooks. Since it is illegal to force students to buy books (in which case, shouldn't it be against the law for the government to not provide these books to me?), I have resorted to begging. My impassioned pleas were fairly successful, resulting in many students purchasing their own copies. To make up for the missing books, I checked out eight copies from the local public liberry.

In my many trips to the liberry over the past few months, I've had a few encounters with a young liberrian. Each time, the liberrian would chat me up, which I initially took as boredom on the part of the employee. On subsequent trips as I tried to obtain books on tape by Kurt Vonnegut, however, the liberrian would reference things like, "You're the one who checked out Fat Actress!" without the benefit of first checking the computer and then tried to find out more about my taste in television and literature. The liberrian was definitely being flirtatious to the point where I wanted to shush em.

Over winter break, all of my copies of Lord of the Flies became due. Thanks to the mess that is my life (by which I mean clutter-ful, not disastrous), I was unable to locate my liberry card. I didn't want to rack up astronomical fines with so many books out, however, so I hoped to bluff my way through the renewal process in person. After entering the liberry, I lined up behind an unfamiliar liberrian, only to have the flirty one call me over with, "I can help you over here." What do you say, no thanks? "Hi again," the liberrian said. "I'd like to renew these," I said. "Can I see your card," the liberrian asked. I open my wallet and do my best to feign shock when I cannot locate my card. "Do I really need the card?" I asked. After taking my name, the liberrian said ey could take my address instead, which I recited knowing that if ey really wanted it anyway, it was already in the computer. Unfortunately, the address in the system was apparently inaccurate, one digit away from my address, so that wasn't an acceptable enough identification. Then the liberrian asked for my middle name, which I pronounced. "How do you spell that?" was the reply. I spelled it quickly, then realized what the issue was. When I've looked at my account before, I've noticed that my middle name was entered incorrectly, the handiwork of a mentally handicapped (by which I mean legitimately, not derogatorily) liberrian. Apparently this other liberrian has made so many typos in my information, it made my account useless without the actual card. "I'm not sure there's anything I can do," said the liberrian.

"What if I gave you my phone number?" I asked. Only after I said it did I realize how flirtatious that statement could be interpreted. Rather than fretting, however, I decided to milk it, hoping this route might be the most useful one in renewing these books. "Let me try something," said the liberrian, who proceeded to manually override all of books in the system in order to renew them. It took more than five minutes, so the whole time I felt obligated to smile and keep saying thank you. When it was all in order, the liberrian smiled brightly and said, "See you soon." Yikes. I might have to stop using the public liberry. Alas, that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make; maybe I'll just have to move.

Anyway, I've never felt like such a hussy before in my life. I can't recall a time in my life I've sorted to using my "feminine" wiles to get what I want. The ways I'll compromise myself for the sake of education!