An ode to the library:

I can't imagine a school without a library. It was the refuge for many of us during our school days. In the library, you didn't have to be anything or say anything, which greatly diminished the odds of humiliating yourself in front of the straight-haired girls who were already wearing eye shadow. It was the one place where it was acceptable to sit alone....
The library was like the friend who embraced all your different incarnations, happily following your interest in Buddhism or muscle cars, but was always the same old friend.

I remember the library in my high school as being rather small and uninteresting, but I still always felt like it was one of the few places, outside of class, I could go in high school where I felt like I was taken seriously. I was the nerdy student that no one liked to hang out with or play with or socialize with, but when I was in there I felt a part of the school. It's not that I read a lot of books, I didn't, but I did enjoy looking things up, finding interesting magazines, or rummaging through an encyclopedia for hours on end just to find interesting facts or history or whatnot. And I would tutor in the library, where other students would come to me and we'd go over their homework together. Wow, a place where people and the culture valued my input in life, rather than picking on me anywhere else. I love the school library.

After high school, I still would go to the community library often for my continued interest in 'research' on my own. At that time I was addicted to Billboard Magazine's Top 40, and since the magazine was a trade magazine and incredibly expensive to subscribe to, the library was my saving grace in reading it each week. Every weekday night I would come into the library and the magazine area librarian would know exactly why I was there, and she would immediately let me know if the new week's edition had come in yet. If it hadn't, she'd know I'd be back the next night. If it had, I'd sit for hours and read.

I also researched Gay life at the library too. It was the fall of 1989 at that time and I had just turned 19. I knew I was Gay, and previously really hated it, but slowly around this time started accepting it little by little. But I was scared and really didn't know what it meant to be Gay. The library gave me a research outlet of my own. I scoured the 'homosexuality' and other related index cards in the card catalogue and read through every book I could find. I never checked them out (for fear), but I would find a quiet, secret corner table in the library and sit down and read, usually with several other books around to hide what I was reading. There were several fiction books by Gay authors there (pretty impressive when one considers that this was Independence, Missouri in 1989) and I could read stories about guys realizing they were Gay and finding love and so forth. There was also the nonfiction psychology books too. And then there were the Gay magazine articles I would research over the 80's, mostly in newsmagazines, talking about the politics of homosexuality or the politics of AIDS. I remember one magazine in particular (it might have been Newsweek) where they had a profile of a homosexual male couple on the cover and pictures of them in the article and showing the rings they exchanged for their relationship. That article really impacted me back then because I could see this couple together, in love, and they seemed ok. Of course all this research also felt a bit clinical, but still, it was information and I was learning what Gay was, in preparation for my own acceptance.

The library helped me grow. It helped me find acceptance. It helped me have a place where I felt welcome and not judged. I love the library.

Do you have library stories?