In the movies, you’re always too fussy, your clothes 10 years behind the fashion. All of you have glasses. In the movies, you’re prickly and protective of the books and the silence and the order.
And so I must believe that people who write librarians as characters in movies have never been to a library.
Your fashion isn’t 10 years behind; it’s 10 years forward. You’re not prickly and protective; you are secretly plotting the revolution. You press books into children’s hands with a glance toward the parents, saying, “Here, I think you will LOVE this one,” and the child knows the book has a secret just for them. You know that in seven years, this child will come back in looking Gabriel Garcia Marquez, W.E.B. DuBois, Joan Didon; this child will be looking over every edge because of the books.
The film directors do not understand that you are the real rulers of the world, not just because you have access to the information, but because you organize it. That is your superpower. You decide what it’s labeled and how it’s related to other pieces of information. Is there any phrase more powerful than “see also”? People believe they are finding all this out themselves, but you know better. You have laid out tidbits to follow, a path of curious morsels we find irresistible until we are led, finally to an answer we never expected, a history we never learned, a study we can’t believe someone got funding for, but there it is. Perfect.
Your modesty is exemplary. I want to believe that in the lounge, in the back room, during lunch and breaks as you heat your leftover soup or unpack your ham sandwiches, like the millions of the rest of us mere mortals, you give each other nods of recognition.
“Hey, nice job getting that Vonnegut to that kid today. Pretty smooth.”
Drop the mic.
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