Ah, it's time for another installment of embarassing childhood anecdotes.  In this week's installment, I delve into my brief foray into running a pretend library.

Albeit a bit scholarly, you might think that pretend library had the potential to be fun if you were playing with a few friends...I actually preferred to play pretend library by myself. 

My pretend library was quite elaborate, with pockets with checkout cards in all of the books and a remote control that functioned as a bar code scanner.  HOWEVER, I did know that the bar code scanner wasn't actually real, so I had a notebook with the titles of all of my books so that I could keep track of the lending process.  I was perfectly content "scanning" and stamping a due date in a book, and then returning it to a shelf, but when I was still playing library with other people I had a friend want to borrow one of my books.  I scanned and stamped the book, and recorded her name into my lending log.  (It was just a formality, I swear I trused her with the book...)  She had the book a few days, and then at school she mentioned that she would return the book to me the next day.  Any fears that I'd had about lending out one of my books were subsided, and I looked forward to the next day when I could scan the book back in and continue the lending process.

Well the next day my friend came to school, clutching a dog-eared copy of a Baby-sitters Club book.  Of MY Baby-sitters Club book.  The lending had gone horribly horribly awry! I pretended that I was alright with it, but I really wasn't.  Books didn't deserve to be abused like that!  My pristine lending library wasn't supposed to be a book page-bending mill! 

From that point on, I made my library a private activity.  It may sound a bit unfulfilling, but somehow performing transactions for imaginary library patrons was just as rewarding as interaction with a peer who would bend book pages like there was no tomorrow.  There was a very long period of time where I refused to lend books to anybody (considering I read only Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley High books from ages 8-14 I don't think anyone was really missing out on anything), but when I got to high school I started surrounding myself with people who knew how to treat books and I learned how to lend again. 

 

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