Nat With An E

Aren't public libraries just the most mysterious places?

Don't you find that musty public smell intoxicating? Aren't those squeaky plastic book covers sooo romantic? Don't you love to use those grubby computer stalls? Those miniature pencils sure do make my hands feel ginormous!

I love to go to public libraries only sometimes they are depressing to me. Something about those guys in the dirty clothes at the computer stalls.

I went last week to the library in order to reorder to my French tapes. How are my French lessons coming you are asking? Pas terriblement le puits mais vous remercient de demander!

When I go to public libraries I like to sit on a miniature chair or else the experience is incomplete. Public libraries always have miniature chairs. Usually in the kid's section, I suppose most adults have adult-sized bodies but I don't know what more to tell you about that.

Also I find the word "public" to be entirely gross. But can you hardly blame me?

This time the miniature chair on which I perched was with the M authors. I sat there and looked about and that's when I saw it.

The library's copy of Anne of Green Gables is covered in pink tissue paper under its plastic sleeve for reasons I cannot fathom. I had never read A. of G. G. however I had seen bits and pieces of the movie on PBS during pledge drives when I was a kid and knew only this of Miss Anne Shirley, that she embarrassed the ever loving daylights out of me.

I remember feeling scandalized watching the scene where Diana Barry gets drunk. To a girl of seven like me there could be nothing more frightening than accidental intoxication. When Anne recited poetry while her little boat sank I hid behind couch pillows in extreme discomfort, and when she fell off the roof after a dare? Forget it. I had to turn it off.

Then this weird thing happened over the summer where two people of divergent backgrounds and relations informed me that I reminded them of Anne Shirley. Once it was in an email and another time it was while on line for a Cafe Rio pork salad.

Both times it was like this: "You are so Anne Shirley! And trust me, you will get pregnant."

Both times in response I think I went like this: Frownyface.

And so there I was on my miniature chair come face to face with a pink copy of Anne Of Green Gables. I knew better than to tempt a pink fate, so I dutifully checked it out at the front desk. It sat in my bag while I drove to get a Diet Coke at McDonalds (their straws are too fat), and while I browsed through antiques at the antique mall, and while I painted my toes a charming red, and while I cooked up The Holbs a mighty tasty supper, and while I showered off a post-run sweat. But that night in bed I finally faced my fate, opened the pink book, swallowed hard, and started in.

By the time Marilla Is Surprised, I am surprised.

By the time Anne Shirley is allowed to stay, I know it deep in my soul.

By the time Anne is naming the Lake of Shining Waters, everything is explained to me.

I prayed about it and I know it is true.

Luckily Anne Shirley is NOT embarrassing, a delusion I had been suffering under for twenty-something years. She is AMAZING.

So now I have some catching up to do. Do all little girls read Anne Shirley and come face to face with their innermost secret wishes and dreams and desires and fears and embarrassments?

And The Holbs? Gilbert Blythe much?

Good crap.

Why did nobody force me to read this as a child? Did nobody love me? I look at my mother now with deep suspicion. How could this happen? Why does this bowl of popcorn taste so good? How did none of my teachers know that what I desperately needed (besides a swift kick in the rear) was an appointment at the Cuthbert home with my kindred spirit Anne-with-an-E??

Really.

I have already set about rectifying this most tragical and egregious mistake of upbringing. I can barely fathom how I still have any scope for imagination left at all when my talents for exaggeration and fancy were so undernourished in my solemn youthful state. Odds are with good luck I will someday have a little girl of my own. Odds are she's going to come out just like me, sadly enough. Maybe she'll be dark haired, maybe not; maybe she'll be dark eyed, maybe not; heavens to betsy she will be cranky as the day is long, no avoiding that. She'll be determined, passionate, obstinate, full of cockamamy ideas. I will have to buy her this book for her seventh birthday. I will sit her down and I will say "Read this, crazy child. It will all make sense."

I am telling you, it all makes sense.

Now tell me, who is your literary lightning rod and at what age did you discover her?