The Right Kinds

Yesterday I wrote about a bother at the library. Well, I'm not done with that. When you go someplace at least once for an hour or two every three days, you have more to say about it than can be conveyed in a mere four paragraphs, or indeed in a small multiple of four. I have yet to fully plumb the depths for all that I have written about the library, but let us see if today's rumination finally taps that very deep well once and for all.

In my memories, the librarian is a very particular type of woman. It is a she, and she is of perhaps three types. There is the kindly librarian who nurtures your love of reading. I fondly remember the one we had in the grade school library. I spent as much time in there as I believe I could have been permitted, and her storytime performances were really something. When she was on some kind of sabbatical, it was a pinprick of sorrow every time I saw that the lady there was someone else.

The second type is the tough, whip-cracking librarian. God knows no one loves her iron-fisted enforcement of the rules governing quiet and organization of the library's resources, but you can't run the place properly without her. Ask any military mind, and they will avow that you have got to have the sergeant as well as the officer. That's what this librarian is. She keeps the peace, and while you might smart from running afoul of her, you need her.

The third acceptable type of librarian is relatively new in my mind. This is the cool librarian. She's young, maybe pierced and tattooed and in general hip. I know that she's real because one is a friend. This type is just wonderful, and a necessary bulwark against another emergent type of librarian. I speak now of the surly, disinterested librarian. To her it is evidently no more than a job, and certainly nothing like a calling. She might as well be working at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and I do wish she would go there.

Let us hope that the three are able to triumph over the one. I'm certain that they can with support. Good people can't work for change, and they won't work in lousy, grim conditions. Bad people can and will. Maybe if we behave ourselves at the library and vote it the resources it needs when at the polls, the three will indeed win out and drive away the bored, unhelpful hired hand. That will be a happy day, and I anticipate it eagerly.