Booking Through Thursday: A bad library memory

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

I’ve really been in the mood to fill out a book or writing meme lately that isn’t a Top 100 books sort of thing.  I think I’ve just about done all those.  So if you all know of any out there, feel free to tag me with one.  ^_^

Anyway, the question for Booking Through Thursday got my attention.  There are some really beautiful memories being shared with this question.  I’m a bit jealous, as my earliest memory of the library is more or less just plain crappy.  The only library I’d ever been to was our very small school library.  I don’t think there was a public library on St. Croix.  I’d been with my classes before but none of the trips really stood out because time books just didn’t interest me much at the time.  I was in third grade and that was the year I found out that my Grandpa had served in the army during Korea.  This became the most fascinating thing in the world to me because I actually knew someone that had been in a war.  I didn’t even really know what war was, but he had been there.  I wanted to ask him all my questions, but my mom told me I wasn’t allowed.  My Grandpa didn’t want to talk about the war and it was best we just let him be.  So I did exactly what PBS had told me to do in this sort of situation…I went to the library.  Suddenly books were cool for the first time because they could give me answers!

So I’m this little punk kid, maybe 8 at the time.  I went and found two books they had on Korea, one a nonfiction book with a lot of grisly pictures and the other was a fiction novel about the conflict.  I was so proud of myself, cause I was finally going to find my answers…and all on my own too!  Only, when I got up to the check out desk the librarian refused to let me take the books home on the grounds that they were not appropriate for a kid.  I begged but to no avail.  She did not even offer to help me find a book that would be age appropriate.  I was so heartbroken.  I cried straight through recess that day.