Part of something big
On Saturday, the_dark_snack and I took part in the CityWrite project, which encouraged people to go to locations across Indianapolis and write a personal memory, especially about the city. We were at a library, so one of the writing prompts had to do directly with libraries: What was your first library experience? I didn't come from Indy originally, so this kinda fudges with the "Indy-memory" aspect of the project. But still, I don't specify where exactly this is so -- could be Indiana, could be Arkansas (which it was) -- but that's kinda beside the point.
I hand-wrote my entry, but made a copy of it and transcribe it here:
"My 'Infamous' Adventure"
My first library was on wheels.
Every few weeks the bookmobile would come to the school in my little rural town. The converted bus or RV was enormous, cavernous from my third- or fourth-grade perspective.
We would linger there for as long as possible, until the teacher called us back out, getting lost among the stacks and shelves. There were books for us, for our reading level. There were colorful books for younger kids; I'd get distracted by their big pictures and look through a few them.
And there were also grown-up books. We weren't interested in the ones full of big words written in long paragraphs for hundreds of boring pages. But boys like me liked to find the grown-up books with pictures -- books about war, and exotic places, and crime. Books that the teacher wouldn't be happy to see us perusing. But we were hidden away in the bookmobile, and until she summoned us out of that magic place, we could indulge in forbidden lore.
One book I'll always remember had a title something like "The Book of Infamous Crime." I puzzled for a long time at the word "infamous." This was new to me, but I could tell that it had the word "famous" in it, to it had to be something like that. And it was, judging by the pictures.
There were photos of murders, of gangsters and their victims, of the aftermath of crime scenes and shootouts. Every few weeks I would go back to those shelves to find the book, see what happened with a millionaire kidnapping or gory murder.
I would never tell anyone -- especially grown-ups -- about my secret fascination, and i never showed the book to my classmates, as it was the only copy of "Infamous Crime" I could find. Occasionally another kid would look over my shoulder, and she would say "gross!" and move on to something she liked, or he would coo "cool" and hunt up a similar book on the same shelf.
Some might think this fascination with the dark side of human nature would lead me to, hopefully, a career in law enforcement, stopping the monsters -- or, one might fear, taking dark "lessons" to heart and becoming the monster. Instead, the boy now occupies a much older man's body and works at a newspaper, where the infamous (a word I am now quite familiar with) appear with some regularity. And I still go to the library, or visit it online, and seek out those dark stories -- books or audiobooks by Stephen King, Dennis LeHane and other famous tellers of "infamous" tales.
I hand-wrote my entry, but made a copy of it and transcribe it here:
"My 'Infamous' Adventure"
My first library was on wheels.
Every few weeks the bookmobile would come to the school in my little rural town. The converted bus or RV was enormous, cavernous from my third- or fourth-grade perspective.
We would linger there for as long as possible, until the teacher called us back out, getting lost among the stacks and shelves. There were books for us, for our reading level. There were colorful books for younger kids; I'd get distracted by their big pictures and look through a few them.
And there were also grown-up books. We weren't interested in the ones full of big words written in long paragraphs for hundreds of boring pages. But boys like me liked to find the grown-up books with pictures -- books about war, and exotic places, and crime. Books that the teacher wouldn't be happy to see us perusing. But we were hidden away in the bookmobile, and until she summoned us out of that magic place, we could indulge in forbidden lore.
One book I'll always remember had a title something like "The Book of Infamous Crime." I puzzled for a long time at the word "infamous." This was new to me, but I could tell that it had the word "famous" in it, to it had to be something like that. And it was, judging by the pictures.
There were photos of murders, of gangsters and their victims, of the aftermath of crime scenes and shootouts. Every few weeks I would go back to those shelves to find the book, see what happened with a millionaire kidnapping or gory murder.
I would never tell anyone -- especially grown-ups -- about my secret fascination, and i never showed the book to my classmates, as it was the only copy of "Infamous Crime" I could find. Occasionally another kid would look over my shoulder, and she would say "gross!" and move on to something she liked, or he would coo "cool" and hunt up a similar book on the same shelf.
Some might think this fascination with the dark side of human nature would lead me to, hopefully, a career in law enforcement, stopping the monsters -- or, one might fear, taking dark "lessons" to heart and becoming the monster. Instead, the boy now occupies a much older man's body and works at a newspaper, where the infamous (a word I am now quite familiar with) appear with some regularity. And I still go to the library, or visit it online, and seek out those dark stories -- books or audiobooks by Stephen King, Dennis LeHane and other famous tellers of "infamous" tales.