Library Cards

I enjoy a good book. I was raised by a librarian and spent a significant time of my formative years in story time. When I say I enjoy a good book, I mean I read the ish outta books. Like packing a book per day when I go on vacation. Well, I did until Jake put a cap at four due to airline weight restrictions. I also burnt out my first kindle within a year. It was the pandemic, my friends, libraries wouldn’t lend out physical books or I never would’ve converted.

On a side note, my favorite library game is book roulette. You find a bunch of books that have a waiting list and then join the waiting list. I’m talking about 15-20 books. Then you get random calls/emails about your reserved book being available, but libraries don’t tell you which one in the message so it’s a complete surprise when you pick it up.

My point being, reading is an integral part of my life. It is likely genetically ingrained in me. When we uprooted and moved to SoCal, I got not one but two new library cards. One from the city library system of Palos Verdes. The other from the county of Los Angeles, mostly due to their enormous size and availability of not so common books. I was very active in both systems.

I continued to use those systems as we entered and continued on our sabbatical year. You can imagine my surprise when I received an email from LA county that they were canceling my library card since I never picked up the physical card (I had to register for an e-card because covid and LA didn’t mix well). Yes, apparently cancelling library cards is a thing. The only way to avoid cancellation was to stop in at any branch and get a physical card…except we were in Wyoming.

In a complete panic I jumped on the Palos Verdes system and found my card was still valid, thank god. So I continued on my merry way of searching for more ebooks. Until I found out they had switched to Hoopla and no longer supplied kindle formats. OMG.

Naturally, I panicked. I felt it was reasonably warranted. I believe even Jake mildly panicked. I tried my best to scratch the itch with those cute free little libraries you see but I read too fast, and their locations are like roulette and the book options are even worse odds. Not to mention that accumulating books in the sub was less than ideal. At one point five were stored on the dashboard.

Once the panic settled, I came up with a gameplan. Suck it up and deal until South Dakota where I would get a library card in my new place of residence. So I had more quality time with Zeke (my xbox) while we moosied our way to Deadwood. I found the adorable historic library and walked in. The librarian took my license and stated that I can’t get a card in Deadwood since I was a residence of Spearfish (even though they are both in Lawrence County) and that I still wouldn’t qualify for a card since it was a mailbox and not a physical address. Come again.

I just want to read a damn book, is that so difficult. Apparently it is. So like an adult, I called my mom to bitch and complain. She added to my panic by stating that Minnesota counties have started checking your address to ensure you still live there to maintain your library card. So any hope I had of using my old Minnesota one was out the window.

It is a sad, sad world we live in where you can’t get a book from the library. I don’t even need a physical book, just something to download to my kindle. I would read anything at this point, well maybe not Dan Brown, but the situation is looking rather dire. If society falls into anarchy or the apocalypse I now know why.