Librarians
by
, 07-14-2009 at 01:25 AM (2199 Views)
I have this irrational fear of librarians, the sort that butcher with a look, the kind that I dread encountering alone in the deepest, most deserted aisles of the history section, far enough removed from the crowded fiction and self-help shelves that the cavalry can only come too late. Most of the library ladies of my childhood were sweet, helpful creatures always happy to assist me in finding some obscure book about my latest obsession, but some are genuinely terrifying and I am positive at least a few keep a hit list. This, presumably, would be filled mostly with kids who ran in the library or blew gum or racked up hefty fines and then left town. I can feel their eyes on my back when I hurry past, hunched and holding my breath like I used to do when passing graveyards, and it's like they see through my soul to that book from my old school library still buried in my closet. I just know I would be standing around immersed in a book, and just at the corner of my eye, the tip of a very long nose would be drawing ever so slowly over my shoulder, and I would feel a hot snort and know she was right there, just behind me, and I would simultaneously jump three feet, experience a heart attack and throw the book at her.
You see, I have a tendency to occasionally return books a little late. Once I saw a comic strip in which a little boy's closet monster manifested itself as a Library Lady that threw a bloody ax past his head for never returning Green Eggs and Ham. This has somehow become my image of myself and my librarian, except instead of Green Eggs and Ham it would be Washington's biography, and she wouldn't miss my head.