I hate when people vandalize Little Free Libraries. I hate when people vandalize anything. I don’t see the point. But then, I am not a young person without a whole lot to do who is trying out a bit of a walk on the wild side. I was that young person once or at least a wannabe of sorts. I may have witnessed a couple of acts of vandalism carried out by people I was with but I never participated in them (I also didn’t tattle on the perpetrators). Most of the kids who do things like that grow up regretting their youthful actions and try to pay it all forward by teaching their children not to do those things. And then the kids get to a certain age and get restless and lather rinse repeat… It’s not gonna change and I think that people who install things like Little Free Libraries should be prepared to repair them.

Anyway, people keep messing with the Little Free Library outside our own fave Haisley School and this is pretty much what it looked like when I walked by it this morning. I love Little Free Libraries but I don’t usually look at what’s inside them. I read books on my iPhone. I know that a lot of people “like the feel of a real book in their hands” or whatever. That’s okay. I hope that books on paper don’t go away any time soon. For now, I am trying to travel light and that means that carrying as much as I can via my iPhone is the way to go. I don’t have to schlep things like books or cameras or paper (for grokkery lists or whatever) or pens (to write on paper) or anything. I *do* seem to be accumulating lucky-shuckial accessories for the iPhone, extra charging cables and cases, etc. Hmmm…

Something made me look inside this broken Little Free Library today. There were a lot of children’s books, as you might expect in a library in front of an elementary school. They were not very interesting and I am certainly not in the market for children’s books at this time of my life anyway. I started to move on when one spine stood out. I took another look. The Littlest Angel. I know that book! I associate it with my grandmother or maybe my eccentric great aunt Ann (I am not named after her, I am named after Anne of Green Gables and she didn’t like her name either, so there moom🐸).

I think the book was at my grandma’s house and I think somebody, probably Ann because she is who I remember reading to us (and she was good at reading aloud), read it to me when I was young but I also remember reading it on my own. It’s a cute story and I always enjoyed it but as young as five years old, I knew that I was not a religious person. But that would be a story for another post and probably one I’ve done a few times but not tonight.

Anyway, I snagged that book outta that devastated Little Free Library. It is safe with me now. I very occasionally search around on the intertubes for vintage books in good condition that I remember from my childhood and I will sometimes pay beaucoup bucks for them. I recently paid $100 for one (that’s about my upper limit if you are the GG and think I am a spendthrift). I don’t think I would have sought out The Littlest Angel and paid for a copy. I probably wouldn’t even have *thought* about that book. But seeing it in that broken little library, I couldn’t leave it there. So here it is, happily making friends with my other childhood books.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2016 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.