I was the victim of a scam in junior high.
The library was my safe haven. On the way home from school, I stopped in at the main branch on Henry Street to get a start on my homework. I wasn’t on a sports team, not my thing. I didn’t stay after school for glee club rehearsals—I failed the audition. I wasn’t part of the co-ed group that hung out at The Sugar Bowl, the popular soda fountain.
My idea of school was to take notes in class, do my homework, and study hard for tests. I read everything I could get my hands on and acquired countless vocabulary words. Miss Corey, my strict seventh grade English teacher, taught us to diagram sentences. I struggled with math, but never with words. I found grammatical structure far more interesting than isosceles triangles. I devoured the classics assigned in each school year. The ones I remember: Canterbury Tales in Olde English. A Tale of Two Cities. Julius Caesar. Silas Marner.
My English teacher, Mrs. Walker, had unusual ideas about teaching our eighth grade class. We studied Greek dramas and Plato’s Dialogues. She was openly expressive in her lectures as if she were on the stage in an ancient Greek amphitheater, looking to the distant mountains, expounding to the multitudes. She transported me there. I was mesmerized by the tragedies writ large by Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides.
On one of my library afternoons, I found a volume of the complete Oedipus Cycle in the stacks—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos, Antigone. Exhilarated, I read for hours until the librarian tapped me on the shoulder at closing time. Just before I exited past the front desk, a good-looking young man of college age said, “Excuse me Miss, I forgot my library card, could you do me a favor and sign out this book for me?”
He caught me by surprise. I agreed quickly without thinking. The librarian promptly consummated the transaction, ready to turn off the lights and lock the doors. The young man was out the door with the book, a buddy joining him on the sidewalk. This all happened within minutes. Walking home, I felt stunned. I tried to slow down the sequence of events in my mind but it didn’t work. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. I knew something wasn’t right and it worried me for weeks.
A month later, a postcard came to the house that the book was overdue. I knew it was just a matter of time before it would arrive to ruin my day. Too ashamed at what happened, I told my mom I forgot to return it and would take care of it right away. The next day, I took eight dollars of my babysitting money out of the tin in my dresser drawer and paid the debt, a steep one. It hurt, not just for the loss of my hard-earned savings at fifty cents an hour, but for the humiliation. There were scheming, dishonest people in the world and I hadn’t seen it. I was an easy mark and fell for the set-up.
Thirteen year old me, shouldn’t I be smarter?
It felt so wrong for such a thing to happen in a sacred place where the written treasures of civilization and intellectual accomplishment so honored by Mrs. Walker resided. This was a lesson that I had so much more to learn in life, and that not all of it would come to me from sitting at my school desk or reading in a secluded corner of the library.
But in a while I felt better. After school recessed for the summer, a boy one year older from the next town over showed an interest in me at a Y dance. Was it the way I carried on a conversation without awkward silences? My serious, bookish side that endeared me to him? Or my smile outlined with a touch of cherry-red lipstick?
The memory of the disturbing incident in the library fell away into my pre-teen past. I was a teenager now, nearly fourteen, and the summer of ‘58 beckoned.
Neat. What interested me more than the scam was the reading you did. I did not get to the “deep” classics until I was in high school with the Jesuits. The Greek tragedians have always moved and terrified me. I think because they got it so right about the horror that family can produce. Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Amazing how you can recall such detailed memories of those years. Sounds like your eighth grade class was better than mine.
I don’t remember learning much till I went to Brookline High.
This brought me back to my life at 13. I, too, was an omnivorous reader, but for me it was fiction that animated my imagination. Throughout my life, this joy of reading sustained me through difficult times, and I’m animated my own desire to write my first book at the age of fifty. These early loves stay with one, and sometimes blossom in one’s own life in amazing ways. Lovely piece, Barrie!
Thank you Davida for commenting on my library book piece. My dad always researched prize-winning children’s books to buy for me and my brother, and that is actually the beginning of my story.
A classic Hero’s Journey saga, told in the context of all those Hero’s Journey classics. Bravo!
I loved reading your young childhood experiences, although I was not impressed with the young man taking advantage of your kindness. He probably has a huge library at home with books other people paid dearly for on his selfish behalf. Scoundrel. You kept your direction and learnt from this. The gullable naive young girl that you were, a little less so through earning stripes.
Thank you Magdeld for taking my side. Yes, now that I think of it, he was a predator. More than just a book thief!
So sorry that happened to you. You had to learn a valuable lesson at too young an age. By the way, I was the same kind of student as you.
Memories! Nice to remember…
Hi Barrie. I enjoyed reading this piece of your school days and of your interests in reading some of the Greek classics ; as well as others, like the Canterbury Tales. I also liked to read back then. It’s unfortunate that you were taken advantage of for your generous nature. It would appear that you were conned; but the reality is that you don’t really know what happened to the boy and the library book. On a positive thought, perhaps he had every intention of returning the library book, but something happened to prevent it from happening. Life is always throwing it’s monkey wrench into people’s lives. The silver lining in this life lesson is that only your purse and pride was wounded and the predator only wanted a library book. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your perspective Diane. Yes, eight dollars is a modest price to pay for a learning experience, although it seemed more serious to me at the time.