1983 was not a good year for me. Well, to be honest 1982 wasn’t good either. Nor 1984… I was going through a rough patch in my life at that time… parents had just divorced, I was entering into Middle School, I was a tomboy BIG time and knew that physical changes to my body were going to be happening just around the corner. I had been playing little league baseball with the boys for over three years and I had to give this up before heading to Jr. High because Jr. High school girls just don’t DO that! My parent’s divorce really threw me into a tailspin at that time and my mother had moved us twice already before I started 6th grade. And then my maternal grandmother died and that just crushed me even more.
Well, with no sports to keep me busy, and no friends down the street to hang out with, I either watched TV or read books. (Remember that we did not have cell phones, internet or computers to occupy us back then. And you could not even call 30 minutes up the road because it was long distance!)
I really do not remember how I got to the library in town to check out books back then, but I did. Well, one day early in my 6th grade year, I decided to move to my Grandparents’ home in Pine Mountain ( I do not want to bore you with the details) but, did not really take anything with me from my mother’s house but clothes and a few cherished belongings.
One day many months later, my mother got a late notice in the mail from the County Library claiming that I had overdue books and the fees were over $100! Needless to say, I did not know WHERE the books were (remember I moved out) and you can imagine how pissed my mother was about the fine. I really don’t remember how it all played out, but we wound up paying for the costs of replacing the books (since I could not locate them) and they deleted my library account.
So, for 25 years now I have been carrying this scar of having my library card taken away from me in the County where I grew up because of those overdue books and their sky-high fines. I did worry for a about a minute today (when I registered with the Cobb County Library system), that they might find my past record and not accept my membership. Surely they don’t keep records for that long!, I thought. I signed up with no problem and man, what a nice facility! It has been YEARS since I even thought of the dewey decimal system...I did not realize that there are actually three libraries within 5 miles of our home. I checked out two novels and I can renew them on line if I am not finished with them in the 3 weeks due date! How cool is that?
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