Out of the Closet

On my first day of graduate school, I sat around a table in a classroom with about 20 other students. As an ice breaker, our professor asked that we go around the room and tell each other our name and a little something about what brought us to library school. Let me tell you right off the bat, I SUCK at questions like this. What brought me there? The #43 bus, that's what brought me there.

So as we go around the room, 90% of people have some story to showcase their inner librarianness. Granted, most of these things are said in jest, but still, I'm floored. People laughingly confess that they used to play librarian as a child, checking books in and out to their friends with fake stamps and return slips. Others talk about their love of organizing things, creating databases complete with scannable barcodes to keep track of their reading lists. Really? Is this stuff really true? I don't/didn't/haven't done any of this stuff. Am I missing my librarian gene?

Well, this past week, I discovered my missing link. I was visiting my parents back in the Midwest, having a grand old time seeing some old sights (like the playground where I broke my arm playing tetherball) and some new ones (like the brand new branch library located in the mall right next to Sears). I was sleeping each night in my childhood bedroom with Nordic Boy, which made ridiculous There's-A-Boy-In-My-Room thoughts go through my head each night without fail. My third day there, my mom asks me to go through my closet, which is still full of clothes, and make up boxes of stuff to go to Goodwill. (An aside- I had enough Belinda-Carlisle-wear to stock an entire 80s fashion museum, seriously. It was so beautiful and cringeworthy). As I wrapped up this task, the last box in the back of the closet remained. I opened it, thinking it would be more lace gloves and day-glo sweatshirts with the collars cut out like Alex in Flashdance, but that's not what's in there. It's a bunch of notebook paper, each sheet folded up into tight rectangles that fit in the palm of the hand. Hundreds of them. As I open them up, one by one, I'm amazed. They're notes. The kind that get passed from one kid to another under the noses of teachers everywhere (or at least they used to, before IM and text messaging and alla that). Notes written to me from friends, and sometimes enemies, from my entire life. I'd saved them all, tossing them into this big box in the back of my closet. Why did I do this? When did I start? The oldest note that I found so far looks to be from around 3rd grade, and they go all the way up to my senior year in high school. I don't remember doing this, and can't imagine what kind of 3rd grader would want to archive "I like you, do you like me? Yes, no or maybe, check a box" for posterity. A weird kid, that's who would do that. A kid who has hoarding issues. But the librarian in me was LOVING this like I'd just found buried treasure. I taped that box right up and sent it to myself back on the west coast. There's an art project in this somewhere. I have visions of putting them in chronological order and binding them into a book. How would one index "Mr. Menard is a dick face"?

So I guess I did have those librarian tendencies as a child. It was just all in the closet.

Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl