Library withdrawl

This morning, while driving to work at my library, I was behind a man driving a nondescript car that, though serviceable, had seen some better days. The rear of the car had a bumper sticker on it that I well recognized. At some point the umbrella organization for all our greater metro area libraries printed up a few million bold, green lettered bumper stickers that read: "MAKE YOUR NEXT STOP THE LIBRARY". This was the sticker on the car in front of me, only someone had desperately tried to remove it. It was clawed at and peeled up in tiny bits. Perhaps the sticker had been on long enough for the paper to fuse into the plastic of the bumper, but the car owner had nevertheless ripped at it like an animal tearing at his own foot in a trap. Almost half of the bumper sticker was peeled up, one feverish fingernail bit at a time. Whoever it was really wanted that bumper sticker gone, but after what looked to be six hours of trying they had given up and half the bumper sticker remained to tell the story.


As I looked upon the hopelessly desiccated bumper sticker on the car in front of me I thought: "I wonder who last helped him at my library."