When I was working on my memoir, WarBaby, I doodled about some of the highlights of my growing up. One memory
stands out. It was about sex and the public library.
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I was 17. That was many years
ago – days when students were required to do hard research and write original papers
that had damned well have been at least C-grade in quality. A long time ago,
for sure.
I came to love libraries in those days. I did much of my research for
papers in the main city library. It was
near my father’s office. After school I’d ride the bus downtown, work in the
library and then ride home with my dad.
One day, I was browsing in the library and I came across a book entitled
What Every 16-Year-Old Boy Should Know
About Sex. Well, being 17, I suddenly developed an overwhelming desire to
see if I had missed anything.
I slid the book in with the three or so others I had picked out and
approached the check-out lady. She processed my books until she got to The One.
The quince-like expression of her face reminded me of Lily Tomlin as The
Telephone Lady on the old Laugh-In TV
show. (Tells you a bit about how long ago this was, eh?)
“I’m sorry,” she said with a salacious smirk. “You can’t check this
book out.”
“Why?” I said. “I’m 17, and the book’s for 16-year-olds.”
“But you have to be 18 to check out books of this nature,” she replied,
the salacious smirk morphing into a Leni-Riefenstahl-wannabe grimace.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, asking for the name and address
of the head librarian to whom I later wrote.
(His reply was classic bureaucratese – wordswordswords, all saying
yesnoyesnoyesno and my favorite “notwithstanding our commitment to learning…”)
I dealt with it. I waited out the bureaucracy. And when I turned 18, I
went back and got That Book.
They should have called it What
Every Ten-Year-Old Boy Already Knows About Sex.
