One day, a year or two or three ago, a man started coming to my library. At first he talked to me a lot. His parent died and left behind a house here, and that temporarily brought him back to the area. He himself had been working an interesting career in a more glamorous state. It wasn't much of a back and forth kind of talking. It was more like I'm-a-bartender kind of talking. I'm okay with that role.
He slowly faded away from talking to me, but he didn't fade away from the library. Pretty soon he was coming here religiously, waiting every morning for our gates to open and leaving every night promptly at closing, just ahead of the stragglers.
He has increasingly brought to our attention small problems in the library with a disproportionate amount of urgency- a water faucet leaking a tiny bit, or a slightly too loud patron presented as minor emergencies that he is keen to see acted upon promptly.
Now, in the last month of his decline, he has started getting in fights with other library patrons, culminating in what sounds like a very rude interaction with a woman over seating arrangements in our lobby before our opening. He may have ended by surreptitiously throwing some ink on her.
Sometimes I think our library is like a desert island. And though beautiful, sometimes library patrons wash up on our shores and find that they don't know how to get away. And though it seems like they are surrounded by company, they are all alone. And slowly, before our eyes, they start to go mad.
But who am I to leave you with such a sad tale.
The library is not only a desert island that drives marooned people mad.
Sometimes it's just a regular old island, full of coconut trees, parrots, monkeys, and pretty sunsets. And seven stranded castaways who make the best of it.
And you would be "The Professor" ?
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I considered the Professor as the best of a bad lot. None of those characters are all that appealing when I consider it. But the coconut cream pies always seemed delicious!
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