I have no good explanation for the lack of content lately.  In true ironic form I’ve been thinking about nothing but writing, writing, writing for the last week.  Not necessarily thinking about writing blog posts as much as the writing process itself; mulling over my life-long on-again off-again obsessive affair that I’ve had with this cruel mistress called Writing.  I can’t promise the blog drought will abate any time soon.  We’ll see.

In other news, today there were two small book-lifters caught at our library during my shift.  They were such cute little girls (6 and 8 years old maybe?) it made me sad that they felt the need to pilfer a book they could likely have borrowed for free.  Sirens wailed as they nonchalantly walked through the security gates.  I suppose they didn’t really know what those metal arches were for.  Luckily for me, the local girl on staff with me did the dirty work of apprehending and questioning the suspects.  She found the book tucked in the older girl’s top.  She was probably harder on them than I would have been, but there’s a story behind that.  Our disciplinary procedure is to take a digital photo of the culprits and ban them from the library for a month.  Not too harsh, but in a honor/shame society the attention they receive during the questioning  is probably pretty brutal.

The other story:  I couldn’t be too judgmental of their sticky fingers because I once got nabbed trying to take the 5-finger discount on a Jane Austen book from the local community college library.  Can you believe it?  Stealing a crusty copy of Jane Austen!  (My mother will have to give me some back-pay on scolding for that one I think.)  To the sense-deprived teenage mind this was probably a very absurd attempt to impress a girl.  If you listened at that time, you could almost hear the soap opera dialog leaking out of my hormone-adled brain:
"Hey, check out this limited edition Pride and Prejudice I scored, Nancy?"
"Wow, where did you get that?"
"Oh, you know, I just lifted it from the library…"
"Oooh, Todd, you’re so dreamy…"

Only it didn’t work that way at all.  The irritated and bearded library clerk who demanded to search my backpack after I set the alarm off would not have called me dreamy NOR even marginally intelligent.  In fact, he pointed out in a very rough, sarcastic tone that I had actually NOT torn out the security bar code at all but some other non-functional part of the book.  Thankfully, he didn’t call the police or take a digital photo of me–he merely confiscated the book and told me to leave.  My embarrassment was severe enough that I voluntarily banned myself from that library for much longer than a month.  And I must say I have never abused my library privileges again.  Libraries are wondrous and truly beautiful things. 

Let’s hope these young Tibetan girls learn this lesson as well.