987 Escape and Acquisition

Library Dust is probably one of the finest blogs about books and the experience of becoming a librarian that I've read. I don't know if he has finally found the job of his dreams, or if he is still looking, but he always has thoughtful, wandering essays that take you to places you didn't expect. Recently he has written about a childhood made less painful by reading what was available in the library.

"By way of escape I mean that the experience of reading transported me to other places, and not so much that as it kept me from inhabiting, at least consciously, a world that was by turns dull and disappointing. I do not recall a single day of elementary or middle school that rose above the level of boredom; the days seemed to last forever and be filled with nothing, the journey from Monday to Friday being an interminable passage over a becalmed sea in deep fog. I do not recall inspired teachers, only rote and routine. Very early in the game I got into the habit of reading my own books in class; pretty soon this got me into trouble because of what I wasn’t doing, which is to say, the assigned work. I filtered downward into the classes for the lazy and less-intelligent students, and rather preferred the lack of challenge. There, in the land of the dumb, the boy who read books was a relief from the usual recalcitrant or slow child, and I was left largely to my own devices. In the rear of every classroom sat a large set of encyclopedias to which I could refer when my own book was finished; I went from Aardvark to Zenith and back again, over and over. I was the best behaved bad child in the school; my brother chose a more conventional path of disobedience and suffered for it. Not me: I learned that the most important thing is not to cause audible trouble. I can count on one hand the homework assignments I completed on time, but I never went to the principal’s office once. I presented a confusing set of signals and my teachers, being busy people, chose to deal with the reader rather than the rebel. All of which was good for a young book addict."

Having loved school myself, I can't imagine the kind of classrooms and teachers he describes. I lived in tiny school districts, Forreston and Mt. Morris, Illinois, but with the exception of a few total losers (a man fired before the classes started who was a pedophile who had submitted false credentials, a music teacher we ran out of town because we were so rotten, and a coach who was fired because he exposed himself), I had outstanding teachers totally committed to making learning, self discipline and common decency important to children. Even my first/second grade teacher (who may still be alive: she was over 100 the last I heard) who was mean as dirt, taught me to read with phonics, spell, figure out paragraphs and made a huge display of my art work. However, little girls did have it easier in school than noisy, smelly, sweaty little boys, so your mileage with school memories will vary depending on gender.

Michael then continues with his unhappy recollections: "Escape also had to do with home life, which was usually just as boring as school but had the added feature of a father who swung between the poles of depression and anxiety, and who learned fatherhood in the “don’t make me hit you” school of parenting. The lighter forms of discipline meted out in my house would get a kid removed to a foster home these days; the heavier ones would land you in the emergency room. My father snarled when he was upset, and it took very little to disturb his equanimity. He was in fact an alcoholic who never drank, who suppressed his cravings with work, and indeed, overwork. When the Old Man had drunk his fill of teaching, he went to a school board meeting or political function. He never did anything halfway except raise kids; he tossed occasional scraps of caring to his two sons and left us to fight over them. My brother became an alcoholic and drug addict about the time I was burying myself in books, and for the same reason. Neither of us has changed habits much over the years."

Although I had the usual disagreements with my parents, particularly because I was a real smart-mouth teen-ager who knew everything, I'd give my parents a gold medal. Reading accounts of childhood like Library Dust's makes me grieve for the little guy he was, figuring out life through books instead of observing adults. My parents didn't drink, smoke, scream, or embarrass the family; they weren't lazy but weren't workaholics either; they were active in church and community; I could count on one hand the number of times I walked into my house and one of my parents weren't there; they were frugal and giving both; they weren't particularly social folks having large extended families instead of close friends; and perhaps most important for a child to feel secure, they loved and admired and respected each other.

I read a lot as a child too (mainly horse stories, dog stories and history), and often visited the library, but mainly as a place to hang out with friends--afterall, there are no malls in towns of 2800. Books didn't really begin to matter to me until I was about 25--and it took library school to open those doors for me. Today's librarians are increasingly computer geeks, interested in manipulating and managing "information" and "knowledge." Not much solace in that, now is there?