First thing this morning, my friend and coworker Jodi came over to my cubicle. In her hand was an appointment card for a March 2010 appointment I have to get my teeth cleaned by my periodontist.
She discovered the card yesterday when she picked up “First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria,” a book she checked out recently from the library and that I returned to the same library branch just a few days ago.
After the “It’s a small world after all”ness of it all, my first reaction was relief that the appointment card wasn’t for something I’d be embarrassed about.
Then I started thinking about all the stuff left behind in books. I find mundane items from time to time, but I know people leave important items, too, items that are important for their monetary value or for their sentimental value.
Two examples of the latter: several years ago, I saw a sign at the library that asked, “Is this your memory?” Next to the sign was a photo of a child with Santa. I like to think the owner reclaimed the photo, but I don’t know. A few years later, I found a family’s Christmas photo. The photo was cut in the shape of an oval, so it must have been intended for a scrapbook.
The lessons here?
1. Always check your library books for important stuff before you return them.
2. It is, indeed, a small world after all. (I’ve been singing this song all day, and now you can, too. You’re welcome.)
Stumble It!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It shames me to admit that I saw the side of the card with your name and then flipped it over to see what kind of appointment it was. How nosey is that?
Every once in a while, I try to purge my bookshelves and sell books to a used bookstore in town and use the credit to get a new book. A while back, I saw a book on the shelf and thought, “I wonder if that was my book.” I picked it up and IMMEDIATELY a folded sheet of paper fell out. It was an email written to me five or more years ago that I had printed out and stuck in this book. Even weirder, I had sold the book years before, so there my email sat, for years, unclaimed.
I wish I had enough time to read books again….
As a side note…I just saw in a magazine (because apparently I have time to read those) a woman who uses found grocery lists to creates quirky “alter egos” from those lists. She has written a book, I think it’s called The Secret Lives of Grocery Shoppers.
For someone who reads as much as I do, I really spend very little time in the library. I own a fantastic number of books and I have NO IDEA why I keep them - except that someday, when I win the lottery, I will have a house with a library and all the books will go in there. Is that dumb, or what?
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I love finding stuff in books. Just recently I started reading “No Country for Old Men” and found someone’s boarding pass for a flight from St. Paul, MN to San Juan, CA from Dec 2007. Certainly not important, but interesting none-the-less. I started to think I should keep it, but why?
Colleen - Mommy Always Wins´s last blog post.."The Method", part 2