Libraries are fascinating places. You can get a Master’s Degree by checking out books from the public library. You can check out items like telescopes and cameras and tablets. You can use the printers, 3D printers, copy machines, and computers. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the library might have a fish tank. You can stare at the fishies between print jobs.
Not long ago I found out the librarians keep a list of things that pass through the book drop or get left in books as bookmarks. A fair amount of the items are funny. A few are stupidly dangerous. The rest are downright bizarre.
It’s not too strange to find all kinds of playing cards. From the King of Hearts to Uno Reverse cards, from Pokemon to Magic, those seem to make a little bit of sense. Of course the joke, “They’re not playing with a full deck,” is funny here, but even more appropriate for the people who use their credit cards as bookmarks, especially if they leave the credit card in the book when they return it.
It’s equally tempting to laugh at whoever left their concert tickets in a book—before the concert even happened. Then again, maybe you just feel sorry for that person. Possibly maybe you go back and forth between mockery and pity, sort of undecided, like the person who left raw bacon in a cookbook.
If you ever find out where you land in that cycle, try these: there are people who leave cash as bookmarks, or prescription notes, or gambling chips. Do you have pity, or do you want to laugh in their faces?
At times, people will leave things which seem not only out of the ordinary but also kind of valuable. A bead bracelet? A necktie? A yo-yo? Dentures? Yes, indeed, dentures have been dropped in the book drop. Or were they launched into the book drop? By cough, perhaps?
Librarians have also found things that are worth nothing in the book drop. Things like hair bands, toothpicks, socks (not in pairs), Post-It Notes, gum wrappers, Capri-Sun straws, corn chips and potato chips, and well, bookmarks. They get thousands of bookmarks every year. Librarians are able to look up who checked out a book last, but they aren’t able to do it for every book that gets returned. Sadly, they have to throw away the majority of the bookmarks they get, no matter if it was personalized, no matter if it was your favorite or not. They can’t keep all of them.
The book drop is a magnet for stupidity. People put all kinds of things that don’t belong in the book drop. Things like toys, onions, rocks, reading glasses, and sunglasses end up in the book drop. According to the news, someone once put a live chicken in the book drop. Of course they were easily located since there are security cameras everywhere these days. Once they were located, they were arrested. They probably thought they were being funny, but animal cruelty isn’t funny. Neither is it funny for the poor librarian, or more likely the part-time assistant, who found the chicken.
Even though it may not be cool for the person who had to clean it up, I do think the fact that someone put a sandwich in the book drop is kind of funny. I can just imagine them placing the sandwich on the car seat next to the books, fully anticipating lunchtime and the devouring of the sandwich. They go to the library to return the books, then head off to their favorite lunch spot, only to find an empty seat. They start looking all around. They look under the seat. They check the glove box. They check their pockets. “Now, where did I leave that sandwich?”
Meanwhile, back at the library, regardless of whether the sandwich was wrapped or not, the person retrieving books that day has to throw the sandwich in the trash. No one gets to eat it.
Mind what you put in the book drop.
Xenosthesia.com 