These are a few of my favorite things. When my back hurts, when the teens preen, if the patron's crazed, I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so dazed.
- The gentle disabled man whose sister brings him to the library so he can borrow another book of house plans. He knows exactly where to look for them. Today, as they left, he stopped in the doorway, clutching his book, and said "Happy Easter" to me and I figured it out really fast and smiled all the way while I said "Happy Easter" back to him because that guy just makes me happy.
- The little boy who rides on in here on his plastic vehicle - and then is so sure he wants to take a book out with him that he just grabs whatever is handy, never mind that it's in the adult non-fiction section and he doesn't have a clue what it's about.
- The fact that the UPS man can find the post office lady in here when she's on her lunch break.
- That enough people know me in this town that when I had to walk to work because the car wouldn't start, I ended up getting a ride. (He pulls over - "Were you supposed to be at work at nine?" "Yeah." "Well, hop in. You'll have to get in the back, though. I've got a chain saw up here.")
- Bookmark contest winners.
- The look on people's faces when they figure out what WorldCat is, and what that has to do with Interlibrary Loan.
... and when I can remember to be aware of it, the whole idea that it's possible for people in a community to own a library together. To pass tax levies, and find volunteers for the board, and gather together the vast array of fascinating and silly and stupid and amazing and ridiculous and right wing and left wing and old and new and microfiche and ethernet that there is in the world, and make a public library out of it. Libraries are good.
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