Oh la-de-da….I’m off to the Library!

Several years ago I coined the phrase…”Library Goer”. I used this term to describe a certain group of people that I perceived had no other description.

The typical “Library Goer” is generally a non working woman….often a mother who appears exceptionally organized. Their cars are always clean and maintained in perfect working order…they are always well dressed and presented…as are their children…and they usually have a Mary Poppins bag equipped with anything you could ever want to handle any situation while away from the home.

I actually dated a “Library Goer” for a short time. It didn’t go too well. We were exceptionally incompatible in many ways despite our very similar socioeconomic backgrounds. She was an ex MLC girl with quite well to do parents…she wouldn’t say “shit” for sixpence … and I am fairly certain that she had never farted once in her whole entire life.

She would be begin to feel the effects of alcohol after her first sip….and so in true ladylike fashion….wanting to stay totally in control…a half a glass of wine would last her the whole night. She was…what I would describe as a “Library Goer”.

Needless to say…I have never considered myself as a “Library Goer”. In fact…I have very rarely even set foot in a library. Although… my many years experience as a salesman did teach me that libraries do have a very useful purpose…..their toilets are spotless and rarely used by the public…if they are used by the public…they are generally used by “Library Goers”…who probably leave them cleaner than they found them…spray antiseptic and air fresher…use their own especially soft toilet paper…and polished the floor on the way out. Libraries and council offices are where the best, cleanest and most well equipped public toilets that can be found anywhere.

The common thread here is that they are both are run by local governments who have no issue at all with getting to sleep at night after a day hard at work feathering their own nests with the funds generated by council rates extorted from innocent rate payers who receive little or no benefit themselves from the hard earned cash they are forced to hand over annually.

In fact…some of the council office toilets I have seen rate among the best…and most plushly appointed I have ever seen. One.... even had an electric toilet seat cover installer that with the push of a button…would install a fresh plastic cover over the toilet seat….and this is no joke!

Anyway…the only reason I had gone to a library in many years…was to use the toilet. I doubt that I could even spell the word library….let alone tell you what went on inside one.

And while I am on the subject of spelling…do you know why library is spelt is such a weird way? ….well…neither do I really ….but the Italian word for “book” is “libro”…. And given that a lot of Italian words are derived from Latin… and lots on English words are derived from Latin….Italian or French…I figure that this is how the word evolved. The French work for book incidentally … is “livre”.

Anyway…yesterday…I was passing a local library and decided that I would go in and see what I might be able to find in the language section that might assist my further development in speaking foreign languages very badly.

To my surprise…they had language courses worth hundreds of dollars…complete with CDs and all …. So I went to the counter and asked a very serious looking woman how much it cost to borrow books…she said to my surprise that it was free!

So I signed up and immediately and took home an advanced Italian course that I know to be worth about $200.00 or more….what’s more… I can keep it for a month…and then extend it for another month online….but better…. I can burn the discs and have it forever!

And all this time I thought rate payers only got their street swept once a month for their rates….. I figure a local councilor must have wrangled a junket to Italy at some point and wanted to learn to speak the language…ordered the library to buy the thing .... and it has been sitting there gathering dust ever since.

So…good for me…I now have a library card…do you believe it…and I am now officially a “Library Goer”! I just wonder if this will effect my life in strange ways….will I become super organized …stop swearing and become a teetotaler....and start wanting to have sex with the lights out???? I doubt it some how.