"Can you help me on the computer?"
He was a little man with thick glasses and a tweed coat. His voice carried him, this deep rumble from a low place, like well-oiled farm equipment.
The couple came in the library holding hands. He wore a letterman's jacket, a football patch over the school letter. She had her blonde hair back in a ponytail and held her books in one hand. They fit the image as the perfect teen couple, the jock and the cheerleader preparing for the rest of their lives.
"That man over there is sleeping," the woman said. Her finger shook, the little charm bracelet on her wrist jingling.
Placing a hold on a book is a scary endeavour. You don't know when the book is going to show up. It's mostly based on hope. Hope in the system, hope in the library staff, and hope that nobody decides to eat the book. That much hope can only lead to ulcers and visiting your parents on non-holidays.
People are afraid of the dark. Maybe not always the physical, non-light variety, but the empty cold nothing that comes with lack of knowledge.
"Mommy?" the child's sing song, a little low note, came again.
I walked around the desk, hands in pockets, strolling. I was sure I would hear the mother give a reassuring "What?" or "Yes, baby?" When all that came was another "Mommy?" I turned my wander that way.
The circulation desk got cold. Like the top of a refrigerator with a leak kinda cold. I lifted my hand up and wondered what the hell was happening.
"I need a place to play my cassettes," the man said. He had liver spots on his shaking hand, the one that held the box. The box rattled with the gentle plastic.
More shopping carts appeared on the library steps and I got concerned. Three days they stuck around, Walter and Brenda berating them, then they slipped away. I wondered if we had space in the basement for all of them.
"I didn't get my paper this morning. Just checking that things were okay," the old man said into my voicemail.
Back home in the south, we call them "buggies." We also call them "shopping carts," the wire mesh baskets on wheels that live in grocery stores. When one showed up at the library, we knew we had an opportunity.
The director said the bell would stay on the circulation desk. Brenda complained that someone was always there, but the director said the bell would stay. Brenda pouted and stood, arms crossed, glaring at the little metal object.
Several times in my life I have moved myself and others into new domiciles. Several, several times, in fact. Over my life I have lived in fifteen different dorms, houses, apartments, and a camper with sixteen different people not counting my parents and my sister.
"Just meet us there," the chaperone told me. Those words started one of the more memorable nights of my life.
He stood with her in a little hallway. They both wore a sheen of sweat and he said something about marrying her.
About a year and change I moved from the bayou of Louisiana to the wilds of Provo, Utah. The diversity of the place staggered me
We were crossing into Florida when I realized that this girl might want to kiss me.
The time of year has come for school visits to the library. Seniors learning deep research for their final papers. Juniors dipping their toes into the waters of "what is database and peer review?" Sophomores and freshman asking questions such as "where is the bathroom?"
"You can always let a hole be cause if you try to fill it, you can't ever get it just right," Mrs. Joyce said over me as I tried to pack the dirt back tight.
When someone asks me what my favorite television show growing up was, I have to think about that. Hands down, I could say MacGyver because I still think it's better than leftover cornbread with onions. But then I think on all the sitcoms and action shows of the 1980s and have to give it up to a genre: weaponized and sentient vehicles.