Escape

by Michelle Kang

My library is about fifteen minutes away on foot, or five by car if you don’t count traffic. You can find me there almost any time; weekends, holidays, summer vacation, winter vacation, spring vacation. I go there so much that I’ve been deemed ‘total nerd’ by my friends at school. I go there so much I could be a full-time librarian or a Guilderland Public Library tour guide, showing off my skills of being able to use the computers with unrivaled accuracy and precision and locate any book with the help of my happy, willing, ever-available friends the Opac and the classic librarian. I go there so much that I can imagine the entire building in my head, inside and outside, from the exact spot of the Book Discussion Group books to the old, old, old magazines from five years ago. I go there so much that when the library is closed, I feel really helpless-slash-bored-slash-dead. If the Guilderland Public Library was a drug, I’d be in desperate need of rehab.

However, apparently, I don’t go there nearly enough. ‘Enough’ is the day when I can go there and know everything about the place. Every time I arrive, I am surprised – pleasantly surprised, of course – to see something new. ‘“Huh. I didn’t know that was there,”’ is a reoccurring thought to me anytime from eleven to five, my usual library hours. Or, ‘”huh, fascinating, they got a (yet) another new movie poster advocating Twilight. Imagine that.”’ During the summer, I realized you could actually go out to the courtyard. ‘”So that’s why the sign on the door says ‘open, come on in…’”

I’m either there by myself, or with my college-bound high-school senior sister whose only use for me is ability to legally drive me to the library without parent supervision. Alright, yeah, that is a bit harsh; perhaps she does serve a few more other purposes, like helping me with homework or feeding me when the ‘rents stay at work later than usual. But the library one, that’s the main one. Anyway, because of this benefit, I get to be alone, with only me, a few novels, and my iPod to worry about. Friend dramas, family problems, money problems, school problems, and every other problem that flew out of stupid Pandora’s stupid box repels away from me, like I’m wearing invisible, protective layers of a mysterious substance around me, a substance only found in the deep confines of the abundant amount of books at the library. The library gives me so much: Contentedness, check. Privacy, check. An education, check. A chance to escape into other worlds where nothing regarding my life matters, check. Access to lots of exciting books and technology, check. Seemingly always-perfect temperatures, be it summer or winter, check. What’s not to like?

I love my library, a lot. Every time I find myself in plush sofas or in front of a flat-screen Dell computer available to anyone who asks politely, I realize how very lucky I am to be here, to have a library to enjoy any time.