your fate is my toilet

oaxacan chocolate and black bean mole quesadilla by 'chocosol' at '1000 tastes of toronto'

rating: 1963 Pontiac Tempest / 10.0

MEADOWVALE PUBLIC LIBRARY GREEN INITIATIVES

I never had any luck with people that stood behind counters. There was this librarian, for example, and many like her in the same library actually, who seemed very angry at the world. It was as if each morning when they were trying to pull the sheets off themselves, they were greeted by a bitter looking sun - a sun that shone rays of bitterness through their shutters or curtains or dusty window blinds. I always wondered how librarians could possess such unappealing personalities since they were what I believed to be volunteers. 

However, I was also quite certain that there were two types of volunteers that existed in this world -- those that volunteered their time and their selves, and those that were forced to volunteer their time and their selves. Now I always thought it would be terrible of me to suspect the latter, but 'mandatory community service' in any of its forms was about as voluntary as breathing -- rather involuntary. These librarians, despite the fact they seemed to lack all humanity, still breathed like human beings. Their lungs contracted because they were obligated to, and that is what made their lungs bitter and that is what made the life they breathed out of themselves bitter as well.

I approached the check-out desk after she called me there. She was a librarian that had that great ability of assuring you that you did not actually exist within the confines of physical dimensions nor human perception; you were invisible. If her eyes seemed to pass across where you were standing, you could be very certain of the fact she did not see you at all, but only whatever was directly behind you. But even then, she rarely looked at anything directly behind you. She mostly looked at your library card or the items you were borrowing or the computer screen in front of her or the bitterly cold arctic air that was escaping her mouth.

Today she took a moment to look directly at the computer screen and tell it that my account status was owing $3. I asked her what the $3 owing status was for. She looked at the items I was checking out and said to them in a bored tone, you had items returned late. I began to ask her, if I return my books on the due date but the library has already closed, would they be considered late, but she interrupted me mid-sentence and looked at whatever it was that existed directly behind me to tell it in an irritated tone, you undoubtedly returned three items late, one was Lolita and the other was -- she collected herself as I tried to finish my question.

So I finished my question again because she couldn't hear me while she had been talking at the same time. I asked again, so you can't return items on the due date after the library is closed. She responded, well you 'can', and then she left some deep gap in the middle of her sentence for some smarmy dramatic effect, but they will be overdue. This confirmed she was an ass. I paid her, and she scanned my items and then haphazardly tossed them to the other side of the counter for me to collect back together into a pile. I put them in my backpack and walked out.

I was glad for the public library I had just left and the resourceful green initiatives it had started. Avoiding the harmful effects of air-conditioning units as well as saving hard earned taxpayer dollars by commissioning library staff such as this women made a lot of sense to me. I only wished the sun would be less bitter towards her, and people like her, each morning. After all, they were the ones doing anything at all about greenhouse gasses. Each day, as librarians like her looked on to those around them who exhibited any form of humanity whatsoever, they knew they had all the reason in the world to be the greenest of all individuals indeed. What individual on God's green earth did not want to be human?