Note: Yes, National Library Week was over a month ago. Unfortunately, I started this post and became bogged down with work and wasn’t able to complete it until recently. Humor me.

National Library Week — I know, it’s finally here — seeks to celebrate that often-overlooked but extremely valuable jewel in every community: the public library. While Americans currently read an astounding 250% less than they did twenty years ago (according to the nonsensical factbook in my head) and funding seems to get slashed ever more deeply by the year, the library remains a great place to lose oneself among honest-to-goodness printed books. No, the library isn’t just “a place where bums go BM,” according to Peter Griffin. It’s a bastion of enlightenment in a world that celebrates idiocy on a frustratingly frequent basis. I particularly enjoy taking my daughters to the children’s section. The library offers the best of both worlds, serving up an enormous array of titles to indulge their developing imaginations while forcing them to shut their pieholes. It’s a setting that fosters a love of literacy that can last a lifetime…

…which brings me to my local branch of the Memphis Public Library. Built in the 60s, the only evidence that it has been updated is the presence of computers. The staff appears to have been trained to exude the bare minimum of courtesy so as not to inspire outright hostility in the patrons. There is, in short, a general sense of ennui engulfing the place. But no matter. My girls and I happily traipsed through the doors weekly to get their fix of kiddie lit.

One day, while checking out books, I was informed that I had an overdue title on my account: “Tanya & Emily in A Dance For Two.” The name didn’t immediately register, but I figured that we may have taken it out then immediately filed it away in my daughter’s bookshelf and forgotten about it. After an exhaustive search of over three minutes of home and auto turned up nothing, I raised my alert level to DefCon 4. But wasn’t ready to concede defeat to a lost book about ballet-obsessed kindergarteners. If I was going down, I wanted it to be for a substantial, manly tome like “War and Remembrance.” Another trip to the library brought a not-so-gentle reminder that the fines were adding up. I assured the librarian with a confidence that belied my crumbling faith that Tanya and Emily had to be somewhere. At home once again, I enlisted the services of my daughters on the bookhunt. We checked under beds, in closets and even under the refrigerator. The only thing  our canvassing produced was a healthy disgust within me for reaching under the refrigerator.

Tail between legs, I returned to the library and apprised them of the situation: the book is gone. I held a slim hope that the librarian would wave her hand with a flourish and tell me not to give it a second thought. Lo and behold, the complete opposite happened. The damage: $20 — $15 for the book, $5 to make it “library-ready.” I balked. $15?! I indicated that I would purchase the book on my own for a cheaper price and give it to them. But in the meantime, I slid a pile of books across the counter. Nothing doing. Apparently a lost book had placed me on double-not-so-secret probation, and I was not allowed to borrow any more books until the issue had been resolved. But technically the book was still overdue; all they had was flimsy admission from some disheveled dad that he had lost it. The gall of it all! I did some quick math in my head…we borrowed an average of 6 books a week and had been doing so for around 8 months. That was over 200 successfully returned books with nary a late fee. Where, I asked, was the loyalty?! I had been a model librarygoer (new word!) and at the first hiccup on my record, they had cast me aside like a torn issue of Highlights. What business is run like that? Are we denied health care if we are late on a previous bill? Are we not all human? While I wished to verbalize my frustration, I recalled a spirited conversation I had engaged in with the proprietor of a Memphis dance apparel store that left me explaining the definition of the word “harpy” to my youngest daughter. At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Pay the goddamn money and get on with your life!” Not so fast. Tanya and Emily had unwittingly become pawns in my personal war with the Memphis Public Library. I would not allow the draconian ways of the MPL to be imposed upon me. They’d ruffled the feathers of the wrong borrower. My boycott would not go unnoticed!

Flash forward one week. The vacuum runs over a smooth, flat object under my bed. It’s you-know-what. I dash off to the library to return my quarry…and to check out a guide to effective groveling.