See my icon by sageness?

[roxy]

I love this icon. It makes me feel warm and happy. I remember when I was a little Roxy, coming home from the library with a ton of books and feeling rich! When we could go to a bookstore, it was like hitting the lottery, and whenever I could buy more than one book, I felt like a rich person.

I remember the library on the base we lived, how it smelled, and how dark it was all the time--the lights were always on, winter and summer. I loved that. The librarian, poor thing, put her foot in it more than once dealing with me. One time, she wouldn't let me check out the books I'd chosen because she said they were above my age. I'm sure she thought she was doing a good thing and my folks would be glad for it. heh. My mother had a fit when I told her. She made my dad drive her to the library with me in tow, and told the woman she had a nerve deciding what was right for her kid. My mom never checked to see what we were reading. (the whole stack was SF, by the way). Another time, the poor librarian tried to tell me I couldn't check out as many books as I'd chosen because I'd never read them all in a week. I think I had ten. Mom didn't like that either. Back to the library we went and little Miss Thing had no limit to the books she could check out.

You see why I'm like this? Spoiled rotten.

You'd think the poor woman would hate me after my mom telling her off, but no, she was nice to me, and when we moved, told me that she'd miss me.

We moved a bit being in the service, and the one thing you could count on was the library. There were always friends there, old friends and new ones. Good times, those, good times.

Comments

[danceswithgary]

I remember having the same problem with the librarian in my hometown. My sister and I would go to the library twice a week and check out 10-12 books apiece. I think my arms are at least three inches longer than they should be because they were damn heavy to carry over a mile to and from there.

It got a little better when we could ride our bikes, but then we had to balance them in the front baskets and not get run over by cars because we were too busy trying to catch the books that were falling out.

The arguments I had over the SF books until I was able to convince her that I wasn't tooyoung to appreciate them. Just think, I wasn't even trying to check out Harlan Ellison, just Isaac Asimov and Fritz Leiber and a few others that weren't scandalous at all. Really. Ursula LeGuin wasn't even under consideration those days. :-D

[roxymissrose.livejournal.com]

I know! I think we would have had less trouble if we were boys--there was this sort of 'look' that said it wasn't very nice for girls to read those kind of books, but I'd read all the Nancy Drews and I needed something to read!