BTT: Libraries

Today’s Booking Through Thursday is about libraries:

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. So…what is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

My earliest memories of libraries were all in our school library in the Philippines, when I was in grade school. As a kid who would finish Nancy Drew mysteries within the two or three hours it took to drive home from the city with a new book, the library was the only place I could satisfy my search for more and more Nancy Drew books to read. They had an old collection, usually the Grosset & Dunlap Pc library editions.

Sometimes I went there to just look around. I read everything from encyclopedias to children’s books (when I was younger, the children’s section had a small rug and floor pillows!). It was a quiet place where I could just mill around. I loved looking at my full library card, a dull yellow, with all the date stamps and the librarian’s signature on each return. It was usually wrinkled by the end of the school year, the corners folded. That is, unless I had to get another card.

One of the odd memories I have of our school library was seeking its peace and quiet with my best friend after a particularly “stressful” afternoon which included a secret admirer declaring himself. But, who should be there, but the guy I had a crush on, asking me what happened with The Talk.

My response: a rather loud, squeaky “What?!“