L is for...

is for the Library

I am a library geek.

I call myself that because in my lifetime I have worked or volunteered at 5 different libraries. That is about 6 years of my existence on this earth.

I love libraries and I always will because they hold one of my greatest treasures inside…Books!

From eighth-grade until I was 23 years old I worked in libraries either as a page, a circulation clerk, computer monitor,

Butler University Library

billing specialists or computer liaison.

Many people assume that working in a library has to be boring. They assume being surrounded by books everyday has to be a massive snooze fest.

But I’m here to tell you, some of my wildest craziest life experiences happened in a library.

I worked as a library assistant in the eighth-grade and a boy who was also volunteering there fingered me in the back room. It was the first time that had I had a real orgasm.

Gary Public Library

When I worked at the Gary public library in high school, I snuck my boyfriend at the time up to the stacks upstairs and we would make out. At the same job, one of my coworkers and I made out in basement of the library amongst that the micro-film my and the dusty old newspapers and magazines from the 80s.

My husband, whom I met at 18, and I made out in the fiction section of the library. It was always easy to make up an excuse to hide in the stacks upstairs where no one ever ventured except for me who always ended up hiding out up there.

I wasn’t the only one getting sexy in the library. Two co-workers of mine had sex in the “Indiana Room” upstairs and in the basement near the magazines.

Besides the crazy sexy escapades, there were the crazy personalities that I encountered when I worked at these libraries.

When I worked at the Gary public library there was a man who came in every day and pulled Dracula and the Bible off the shelves and read them at the same time. No kidding. Every day he requested the same two books. He looked way too creepy for us to ask him why he wanted those two books at the same time.

West Chicago District Library

Then there was the guy who came to request back issues of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen so he could steal pages to take home to masturbate to. We all knew what he was doing but the librarian didn’t believe us.

And finally the guy who would come in the library when it opened and played computer games until the library closed. He reeked of sweat and no life.

Don’t get me wrong, the patrons were not the only crazy ones.

When I worked at the West Chicago Public District library in West Chicago, IL, I met a woman whose marriage fell apart right before my eyes. Her husband was the security guard at the library and she worked at the circulation desk with me. She discovered that he was cheating on her with a 15-year-old page. She also found out that he was a pedophile and into kiddie porn.

Not even making this up.

Batavia Public Library

Then there was the Librarian that wore his Icy Hot patch on the outside of his shirt. We thought it only worked when it made direct contact with the skin. Maybe he knew something we didn’t.

There were backstabbing, gossiping, weed smoking, crazy co-workers just like everywhere else.  

We fought, we laughed, we made fun of some of the patrons, we made fun of some of the librarians, we made fun of each other. But I always loved working at the library and I could not think of one day that was boring.

Yes, working at the library isn’t as boring as it seems. My experience was always fun times and crazy shit.