Librarians and Their Wonderfully Subversive Plays

Long, long ago I worked at the local library as a page.

I wandered through the aisles of books with my heavy wooden cart, shelving and organizing and reading. Oh yes, reading!

I certainly did a fair bit of that over the course of my shift. It was almost impossible not to flip through intriguing books and do a little skim-reading before replacing them on the shelves.

(Mind you, I most certainly shelved more books in my allotted hours than my dear brother--he'd actually go so far as to retire to the children's section and get comfortable on a bean-bag chair with a book. He was amazingly adept at appearing busy before a senior librarian appeared around the corner. My brother pointed out that usually this librarian was our mother, so he was not too likely to get canned, although I do believe he was pushing his luck even so.)

The many, many books that caught my attention went on my Stack-'o-Books-to-Take-Home. There were not many job perks to being a library page perhaps, but one of the immunities in the three golden years that I worked there (for under five bucks an hour) was the freedom from library fines.

Oh, the joy of taking home eleventy-million library books and reading them at leisure. Sigh, those were the days.

Alas, all good things come to an end. Library Page was a job available only to high-school students, and so eventually I had to seek my further fortunes in less-missed positions such as Video-store Clerk and Gas-station Girl.

I've always remembered my time at the library fondly. And after all, I am a librarian's daughter.

My mom retired last week from the Library after twenty-five years. But of course, there was a party! And hurrah, I was invited!

Two dozen librarians descended for food and merriment at Diane's house. I've met most of them over the years, and they still give me privileges such as going behind the Desk to the back room to get my pick of special books for my Preschool storytimes. I feel loved. :)

My mom was treated to birthday cake (her 65th), guitar sing-a-longs, gift certificates, speeches, and new luggage for her trip to Italy, but I think the highlight of the evening was a wonderfully subversive (well, for librarians) puppet-play. It poked a little bit of fun at all my mother's favourite types of annoying patrons (that's library-speak for customers) as well as a few pointed jabs at the High Mucky-Mucks of Red-Tape down at Library Headquarters. They are so, er, *cough cough* beloved to my mom's heart. The sweetest little librarian puppet represented my mom. And it all unfolded under a large sign that reads Shh!

I thought the play was hilarious! There was one wizard puppet whose broad Glaswegian accent left little doubt that it portrayed some particular someone in middle management who has gone over to The Dark Side .

"Och, woman!", the puppet screeched in answer to the librarian puppet's question at one point in the script. "How should I know?! Just click your heels together three times and say: 'There's no place like the staff room! There's no place like the staff room!' "

Heh, I laughed so hard. Hmmmm. Perhaps you had to be there....Anyway, trust me, it was all true to life.

Oh, and I'm including this picture of my mother's hair for my brother's benefit. She cut eight inches off it in honour of her retirement and it looks fabulous. Very healthy and thick-looking and I hope my own hair is as dark at her age. Drat it, I have a couple silver hairs already. Perhaps the secret is becoming a librarian.