When
I hear about all of the great field trips the grade-school kids are taking
nowadays (or should I say they once took, before Covid-19 struck), I must confess I get jealous. I mean when the
students rave about the great time their class had at the Boston Museum of
Science, going on a whale watch, or helping transform sap into maple syrup at
some sugar house…I want to stage a protest.
When
I was in grade school, we took exactly two field trips during the entire eight
years: to the city library and the
grand opening of a new bank downtown.
The
bank trip wasn’t too bad. We had the opportunity to see coins being sorted and
rolled, and we each received a lollipop and a brand new savings passbook with a
whole dollar already deposited in it. Back then, a dollar could buy 20 Hershey
bars, so it was no small amount.
The
trip to the city library, however, was…well, scary. Prior to the “big trip” we
had been studying something called the Dewey Decimal System, a numbered,
confusing code by which library books were filed. Although I tried very hard, I
never really understood the system, so by the time my class arrived at the
library, I was so fed up with the whole thing, I was ready to tell Dewey
exactly what he could do with his decimals.
Just
before we entered the library, our teacher informed us that we had to pay
strict attention to everything we were about to see and do inside because we were
going to be quizzed on it when we got back to school.
Great
way to ruin a perfectly good field trip.
My
first impression of the library was that is was much too big and too dark. Our
official guide, one of the librarians, was a tall, thin woman whose lips formed
a tight, straight line. As I stared up at her, I was pretty sure she never had
smiled even once in her whole life. She also was wearing those pointy, cat-eye
style
glasses that were so popular back then. They made her look downright
evil.
 |
| THE CITY LIBRARY, MANCHESTER, NH |
The
first thing the librarian showed us was the all-important library card. “Having
a library card is a huge responsibility,” she emphasized, holding up a
small pale-blue card with a little metal plate on it. “You must NEVER lose it,
and never EVER lend it to anyone! It is
yours and yours alone. And it is your responsibility.”
“I
heard that they have a big dungeon down in the basement,” Jimmy, the kid
standing next to me whispered to me. “If you lose your card or a book, they
send you down there. First they torture you, then nobody ever sees you
again!”
“Liar!”
I snapped at him, much louder than I’d intended.
“Shhhhhhh!”
the librarian, a bony index finger against her lips, immediately hushed me.
“Another important rule in the library is NOT to speak! You should take your invisible little keys
and ‘chick-a-lock’ your lips the moment you set foot inside the front door!”
“If
you’re caught talking in here, they sew your lips shut with fishing line
downstairs in the dungeon.” Jimmy was
at it again.
For
some reason, I actually started to believe him.
The
Dewey Decimal System was even more intimidating in person. Never had I seen so many
drawers in one place, and each drawer contained hundreds of little file cards,
each marked with a book title and a code…full of decimals, of course.
“I
want each of you to look up a book,” the librarian told us, “and then find it
by using the system.”
My
luck. I chose a book that had the word “stack” in front of the code number. I
had no idea that a stack book was one that a library person at the desk had to
go get for you because it was kept hidden in some special area of the library
that was off limits to the general public and required rock-climbing equipment
to reach.
So
there I was, wandering aimlessly throughout the library, foolishly searching
for what I expected to be a huge “stack” of books as tall as the Leaning Tower
of Pisa, where my book prominently would be on display. When I found no such
stack, I became so frustrated, I honestly was tempted to search downstairs in
the dungeon, but I figured I’d rather flunk than risk having any of my body
parts sewn together with fishing line.
Most
of the other kids found their books with no problem. I, however, returned
empty-handed.
“You’re
really gonna get it now!” Jimmy immediately was at my side. “While you were
gone, the lady said that everyone who couldn’t find their books is gonna be
taken downstairs and have their eyes taped wide open and be forced to watch a
gazillion hours of film strips about the Dewey Decimal System!”
Now
that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that in his past life, Jimmy actually
was the Marquis de Sade.
I
hate to say it, but once I was out of school, I failed to renew my library
card. In fact, I had no idea where it even was. So one day, when I was working
on a big writing project (back in the Dark Ages, before home computers) and urgently needed
some research material, I borrowed my mother’s card.
As
I stood at the library’s checkout desk, my arms loaded with books, the words of
the librarian from my grammar-school days, about never lending your
library card to anyone, came to mind.
When I handed the card to the employee, she looked at it and shook her
head. “I’m sorry, but this card has expired,” she said. “Just take it over
there to the information desk and have it updated.”
I
did as I was told, though my common sense should have told me to just put back
the books and leave. My common sense also told me that I should have checked
the expiration date on my mother’s card before I’d borrowed it.
The
employee at the desk took the card, then quickly located a matching file card
and set it on the desk. I felt myself grow pale when I spotted my mother’s date
of birth boldly typed on the card.
The
employee, calling me by my mother’s first name, asked if any of the information
had changed since the last renewal.
Nervously, I shook my head. Her eyes scanned the address, the phone number,
and then came to rest on the date of birth. She paused, looked up at me, then
back down at the date of birth. She opened her mouth as if about to speak, but
stopped herself. I felt the beads of perspiration popping out on my forehead as
visions of myself chained to a wall down in the dungeon, knee-deep with human
skeletons and old, discarded Dewey Decimal cards, raced through my mind.
My
worrying turned out to be for naught, however. The employee matter-of-factly
renewed the card, handed it to me and thanked me.
I
was pretty pleased that I’d managed to get away with pretending to be my own
mother…until I realized I had passed for someone over 20 years my elder.
Maybe
getting caught and having to endure some hideous torture down in the dungeon
wouldn’t have been so bad after all.
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