Ah, the library....

Let me first begin with a confession. I have been on the run, lived on the lamb (whatever that means, if I'm even getting it right...), ran from the law. Or, at least the law if the law were the library. I have what some librarians might consider an unhealthy love of books. Unhealthy especially when the legitimate owner of the book is the public library. But that whole legitimate thing has never gotten in the way of me writing my name in big letters at the beginning of a book I could not bear to return to its rightful owner. A rightful owner that probably never even really appreciated what a gem it so freely loaned out to anyone with a card - and can I say that they give those cards out far too easily? In fact, maybe it's even purposeful entrapment - who knows what nefarious motives lurk behind the woman whose main communication with her patrons is "shhhhhh." It began with "Touch Blue" - a book full of incantations and spells that was too special and rare to return, so I hid it under my bed in second grade, confessed to my mother that I'd lost it, and still have it on my bookshelf to this day. li And it continued after that, threatening my high school graduation because I owed on unreturned books, making me delighted that a move to a new area meant starting over fresh with a new library, turning over, as it were, a new leaf. I would become a good library citizen, but then a book would enter my life that I couldn't bear to turn loose of.

But I came clean. I went to the library about a month ago, confessed to my loss of their paperback copy of Martin Dressler over 6 years ago, paid a paltry fine of less than $15 and became a member of the library in good standing once again. And I've vowed to stay clean this time. I would not be a recidivist!! I am a changed girl. I belong to my public library. A trip to the library still leaves me a little breathless. Really? I can just take these with me? And read them and all you ask is that I bring them back when I come in for more books? There is a stack of 5 books by my bed. God help me if one is too irresistable. Fortunately, I now have Amazon to get my back if I get in really deep with a book.....