Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Library Overload


You know you've checked out too many books from the library when...

Your car beeps at you the whole way home because it thinks there is someone in the passenger's seat who hasn't put on their seatbelt.

Library fines are a part of your monthly budget.

You're on a first name basis with the library staff. All of them.

So are your children. All of them.

You have a revolving credit in their computer, from losing books, paying for them, and finding them again.

The metaphor for joy that first pops into your mind is the time that two videos for which you'd been searching your home for weeks turned out to be sitting on the library shelves all the time.

Your list of items checked out no longer fits on one page.

One of the numbers that pops up most often in your caller ID window is the local library.

That's because you, a homeschooling mom, and your son, a science fiction fanatic, are addicted to interlibrary loan requests.

In order to make a fire in the fireplace, you have to move 4 stacks of books and videos. (Two and a half are the library's.)

Your idea of hearthside decorating easily incorporates a couple stacks of library books.

Your children can build a road out of library books that extends nearly the length of your house.

Most of the books are on the ancient Romans and you think, "Ahhhh, how appropriate!"

6 comments:

Bethany said...

Very funny! What humor you have!

I visited Frederica Matthews Green Blog and loved it, I am eating up her writing on Orthodoxy. Thank you for introducing me to her!

Love,
Bethany

Survival said...

*laughs* That is so great!

Linds said...

I can identify with this! I love the fact that your car thought it had an extra passenger!

Hen Jen said...

I suffer with this too. I hate it when I actually hit the book limit on my card, which is 50 books. -and we visit two diff. librarys, so right now I must have like 75 library books in my house. And I always have fines, it's just pitiful because I can renew online,...and yet...

Anonymous said...

Hey Jeanne--glad to know I'm not the only one! I have always half expected to see a WANTED sign with my picture on it on the library bulletin board. A nice thing about our new library is that they don't charge late fees (!), just replacement fees after about 6 months, and are consistently gracious about refunding me for books I thought had been lost, and now are found. Our new library obsession is any book by Richard Peck. Your kids--all ages--would enjoy them.

Nancy B in Ipswich, MA

Islandsparrow said...

Yes!! And now I've discovered interlibrary loan - I think the librarians were trying to keep it a secret from me - I can get any book in ALL of Canada. They make it a nuisance - you have to fill out a form for every book and you can only order 3 at a time - but it doesn't deter me one iota. My horizons have expanded!