A page after this, we're attacked by a Jane Chance monster

In the real world, librarians don’t fight epic battles with literature’s greatest villains or even have cool ILC badges. I know, it’s a total bummer. However, there are some ancient librarian secrets I can report back to you after becoming a MASTER of library science (I will always, always say it like that from this day forth; I assume that’s the whole point of calling it a “master’s degree”). Here are some true librarian facts that might shock you:

1. Librarians haven’t read every book ever
2. Librarians judge books by their covers ALL the time
3. Librarians don’t hate fun (your mileage on this one may vary depending on librarian/library)

The first of this list is probably the toughest to deal with because, of course, we want to appear knowledgeable about every book ever, even though it’s impossible for this to be the case. Here are some tricks librarians (including me) are using right now to fake you out:

GoodReads

GoodReads is amazing! It’s kind of like the facebook of books. You can keep track of all the books you’ve read and want to read, organizing them into any categories you want. Mine include “Books I Own”, “Favorites”, and “Books I Started But Couldn’t Finish”. You can assign them star ratings and write reviews, and see what your friends are reading. When I remembered it existed a few weeks ago, I went into a frenzy trying to remember every book I’ve ever read to properly record it. But you probably only have these OCD urges if you’re actually a librarian already. If you don’t have GoodReads, you should def check it out, and if you do, then we should be friends.

Favorite Book Montage!

WorldCat

WorldCat is like a library catalog, but it lets you search all libraries in the world at once! Okay, maybe not all libraries, but it certainly seems like it. Librarians use it all the time for things like Inter-Library Loan, but I mainly use it to see how far away I am from a given book at any time. Seriously. Search for a book, and the results will tell you roughly how far away you are from a library copy. For instance, if I search for my book I get:

Of course, it doesn’t know that I have boxes of them in my closet. It’s really great when someone asks for a book we don’t have at the library to be able to tell them “Wow, the nearest copy is 3000 miles away! And in ENGLAND!” It makes me look like some kind of book psychic!

What’s Next?

You know what’s annoying? Series. And not just because I’m always confused about what the plural should be. Especially annoying are ones like Warriors or Left Behind that are actually a bunch of different series all shelved together in a seething, confusing mass. Luckily, I don’t have to read all of them to untangle this confusing web of prequels and sequels and spin-offs and “companion books”. I have What’s Next, which is maintained by Kent District Libraries in Michigan. It’s super helpful when some kid wants to know “Which Magic Tree House book comes after the one with the dolphins?” or “I need Magic Tree House #15!” Because there are 45 books in that series! Not to mention the confusion of Erin Hunter’s six series within a series about tribes of warrior cats.

Don't laugh, if you were born 12 years earlier you'd be into it too. Apparently.

Novelist

Library grad school is ALL ABOUT Novelist, but my experience is that real librarians don’t use it to fake you out as much as you might think, just because it takes awhile to load. It’s a huge database full of books and recommendations for other books. Chances are, you can access it too through your local library, although you probably don’t know it. If you search for a book, you get a brief description including quick one-word descriptions of the genre, pacing, tone, and writing style, plus the reading level and any reviews from “real” sources. Then on the side bar it recommends books like that one, and lets you customize a search for them by giving you check boxes with that book’s characteristics.

This one is from the book I'm reading with Steven right now, Museum of Thieves

So I can easily find other books with 12-year-old girl thieves, but maybe not museums. Of course, there’s no guarantee your library will own any of these books. And you can’t search by cover design, which would be the single most important librarian tool if someone would just invent it.

Bonus Library Secret: Custom Book Lists

This is possibly only a librarian secret in that I don’t think it’s advertised very well. At the library I work at right now, if you fill out an online form about what kinds of books and movies you like, they’ll email you a detailed book list just for you about a week or two later! The form is way detailed with lots of check boxes for preferred genres and sub-genres, setting, main characters, relationships, or tone, and the book list you end up getting is usually very thorough (and pretty!). They don’t ask for your library card number either, which means anyone can take advantage of it!

Or historical inaccuracies in 300

In reality, it’s usually just a lot of “Where are the mysteries?” and “Where can I find a book that’s exactly like Harry Potter but not Harry Potter?” Sometimes, though, there are those bright stars of individuality who do something so bizarre that I remember them after my shift is over, that I end up telling Steven about so many times they earn a nickname. “Nancy Drew Drunk Lady”, “Star Wars Quote Yelling Boy”, and “Angry Divorcing Mom” are but a few. This week I got to add another perfect, special butterfly to this rare and interesting collection with “Existential Crisis Guy”.

Existential Crisis Guy is maybe the weirdest encounter I have ever had at the library (which, if you’ll take a moment to think about it, is REALLY saying something). But also one of the most polite and uplifting, something I would never think about, say, Nancy Drew Drunk Lady. He came in asking for books about “basic virtues”, which, since we were in the children’s section, I assumed were for his kid. We have a lot of books about things like Responsibility and Caring for the preschool/early elementary crowd, so I showed him where they were. He took one of every single title we had in the section, even doubling up on some of the virtues if more than one series covered it. My first assumption was that he maybe had the most badly behaved child in the world, and that kid was about to get such a reading to.

Then he told me that the books were actually for him. He admitted that he wasn’t the strongest reader (which is a very brave thing to admit! Sometimes people understandably dance around the issue and it’s awkward) and also that he was “having a hard time”. He mentioned losing money, realizing that money can’t buy happiness, and that he is now desperately searching for inner peace. He turned to me with pleading eyes and asked, “Which is the book I can read to tell me how to be happy? How can I find inner peace?”

My first thought was, “Wow, out of the eight librarians on desks right now you thought I was the best person to ask this of?” I guess because on most days I feel so far away from inner peace–or, really, any kind of peace. I told him that there are lots of books about that, and all of them say something different. He seemed pretty bummed that there wasn’t one answer I could just hand him. I showed him the section on feelings and he seemed moderately happy with a book titled something like Being the Best Me I Can Be. I also kind of hesitantly showed him the religion section just in case, but he was having none of that, telling me that religion is not the same as inner peace, that he wanted spiritual happiness. Then he thanked me profusely, said he would be back after he finished “learning these basic morals”, and left.

For a long time after this encounter, I was pretty much freaking out. But the more I thought about it, the happier I got. Here was someone who was clearly in emotional distress. And he chose to come to the library for help. The library, you guys!

I was trying to think of other places people might go to with this sort of problem. Obviously many people, certainly in the past but still today, might turn to a church or religious counsel of some kind. Except when I tried to offer him this he seemed adamant that religion was not the kind of help he needed, that it had nothing to do with “spiritual happiness”.

What about the Internet? That great leveler of libraries that most of my professors are not-so-secretly afraid of? Why didn’t he just type “How can I be happy” into Google? There could be lots of reasons (including not having Internet access at home, for which you would also need to come to the library), but I think one of the main ones is that he needed to talk to another human. Especially with these kinds of problems, there’s little comfort in an algorithm, however well designed. Plus, do a search for “How can I be happy?” You get 1,320,000,000 results! And most of them are trite little tips about “spending time outside”. How are you supposed to sort through that? How are you supposed to find some kind of meaning in that? For some people and for some things, I think the library is the only place to go, whether they know it or not.

And it’s not like I can just tell you the answer. But neither can google, when it comes down to it. What I can do is show you how to maybe find an answer, which in the end, will probably help you more in the long run, when you come up with other questions, anyway.

Sometimes (okay, all the time) grad school gets me down for being a pointless waste of time. Sometimes I let the gloomsayers all around me affect my own attitude, question my own sense of purpose. The day before I met Existential Crisis Guy I had even been thinking things like, “Maybe people really don’t need libraries. Maybe they will disappear and I’ll have to find a different, less awesome job.” I know it’s not really on par with what Existential Crisis Guy was going through, but meeting him definitely helped me get over it. I can tell you with 100% surety that we NEED libraries. Maybe not for little things anymore, like looking up how tall giraffes get, but for big things, things where you need answers but also community.

So, thank you, Existential Crisis Guy. I hope I can help you as much as you’ve helped me.

Title: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Author: Alan Moore; illustrated by Kevin O’Neill
Not to be Confused With: the movie spin off
Challenged At: Jessamine County Public Library, Nicolasville, Kentucky
Along with four other works for: “offend[ing] me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion”

I saved this one for Banned Book Week because it definitely has the most dramatic challenging of any this year as evidenced by the fact that I knew all about it before I started this project. The ALA 2010 Banned Book List has this to say about it:

A petition with 950 signatures was presented to the board to overturn its collection policy. The petition specifically asked for the removal of four works on the grounds that “they offended me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion” of what should be in a public, taxpayer-supported collection. The petition concluded the works constituted a public safety issue in that they encourage sexual predators… the graphic novel eventually got two employees fired for breaching library policies, the library director was threatened with physical harm, and the book was recataloged, along with other graphic novels with mature trends, to a separate but unrestricted graphic novels section of the library.

But the best part of the story, the part I knew about previously is that, “got two employees fired” part. Basically, about two years ago Sharon Cook, a library assistant, found League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier on the shelves and freaked out because there are drawings of naked ladies in it plus some strange 1984-propaganda-pornography that is supposed to be taken as a joke. After having her challenge denied, she decided to check it out and never return it for about six months, renewing it over and over so that it would never be on the shelves. Then someone put it on hold and, looking up the patron, Cook discovered it was an 11-year-old girl! After consulting with two colleagues, Beth Boisvert and Cook decided to cancel the girl’s hold and continue what they were doing. Nice. You can read a detailed article about the incident here and elsewhere, but here are my favorite parts of the Lexington Herald-Leader piece:

“Cook and Boisvert are not librarians. Generally, you must have a master’s degree in library science to merit the professional title “librarian.” The majority of library employees do not have an MLS. These paraprofessional positions go by a variety of titles depending on the library system.”(p2)
I like that this distinction is in no way important to the story, but is included anyway, maybe because it is the single most confusing thing about libraries and something I have to explain to people on a frustratingly frequent basis. Usually directly after saying “I’m getting a master’s in library science”

“Cook says she consulted with a manager at the library at almost every step in her decision-making process about the graphic novel. She says when it first came to her attention, “someone suggested we spill a cup of tea on it. Instead I checked it out.” She then went through the proper procedure of challenging the book, something any patron can do. That required a committee, including Cook, to read the book. “People prayed over me while I was reading it because I did not want those images in my head,” she says.” (also p2)
Until now I was totally unaware that having people pray over you while you read something would stop it from getting into your head. I really could have used that while reading Twilight; sometimes I just can’t stop thinking about how Stephenie Meyer can be a frillionaire for perpetrating so many crimes against the English language.

The comments at the bottom of the article from people are also pretty amazing.

Anyway, all of this drama was why I was really excited to finally read the graphic novel in question. It’s possible that I missed a lot of it/did not really enjoy it that much because rather than reading the two volumes that came before it, I assumed my knowledge of the 2003 film titled League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be sufficient. Also, I did not care that much. Black Dossier is set in an alternate version of 1950s England, just after the overthrow of the Big Brother government described in 1984. Mina Harker and Allen Quatermain–who are immortal for various reasons–steal the dossier the government has compiled on the now-disbanded league and dodge their pursuers to escape to the magical Blazing World which can be reached through the North Pole. The Black Dossier contains the actual contents of the stolen dossier interspersed with the tale of Harker and Quatermain’s escape with it, which provides for an interesting mishmash of literary styles, since the dossier contains, among other things, comic histories, a lost Shakespeare play, government briefs, postcards, etc. I enjoyed all the small literary/historical references, such as how Emma Night (who later became Emma Peel of Avengers fame) was one of the pursuers, or how the dossier contained excerpts from a lost sequel to Fanny Hill.

I can also easily see why this work would be problematic. If you know anything about the original Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Fanny Hill (first published 1748), you know that it’s probably one of the most banned books of all time for being essentially prose pornography. Naturally, the excerpt from the sequel found in the Black Dossier is written in the same style with similar content to the original, except for the additions of some fantastical elements that herald Fanny’s involvement with the League. There are other instances of nudity, and an example of 1984-esque porn meant as a joke, but I can’t find anything that I would say “encourages sexual predators”. There is one scene near the beginning in which Jimmy, a James Bond analog, attempts to force himself onto Mina, but she and Allen Quatermain beat him up before he can get very far.

This book is shelved in the adult graphic novel section in the library I work at, and I don’t think I would put it anywhere else. Many people have the misconception that if something has illustrations or is done in a style that looks like a comic, it must be for children or teens, which is entirely not true and never has been. Especially lately, the graphic novel as a format has exploded in popularity with offerings on all subject matters for all different age groups. Would I recommend this book to an eleven-year-old? Of course not. Would I let my eleven-year-old read it? Probably not. Were Cook and Boisvert right to keep it out of her hands? Absolutely not. They aren’t her parents. They can’t tell her what she is and isn’t allowed to read. I wish more parents cared more about what their children are reading–but if a child checks something out that doesn’t meet with their approval, it’s entirely their fault. Libraries aren’t pushing sex, and we’re not the reading police. I hate when people think that just because they’re in the library, they don’t have to worry about being parents. Why is that? You don’t expect people in retail stores to just take over for you! Maybe it’s because we look like teachers. If your kid is being loud, throwing books, or trying to eat the computer keyboard, it’s your job to stop them, just as it’s your job to decide what your kid can and can’t read. Librarians are here to help, but we’re not going to parent for you. And you wouldn’t like it if we did. Because I believe everyone regardless of age should be required to read one challenged book a year and talk about it, and some of my colleagues (I’m looking at you, Barbara) believe in forced labor in lieu of library fines.

I have actually had kids decide the computer keys looked good to suck on. It’s like sending the flu a personalized invitation to your birthday party.

Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block
Harper Collins
Four Wisconsin men belonging to the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) sought $30,000 apiece for emotional distress they suffered from the West Bend, Wis. Community Memorial Library (2009) for displaying a copy of the book. The claim states that “specific words used in the book are derogatory and slanderous to all males” and “the words can permeate violence and put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.” The CCLU called for the public burning of this title. Four months later, the library board unanimously voted 9-0 to maintain, “without removing, relocating, labeling, or otherwise restricting access,” this and other books challenged in the young adult section at the West Bend Community Memorial Library.

Here were the two parts that stood out to me the first time I saw this:

$30,000 apiece
public burning

$30,000?? Because the book was on display?? I can hear what you’re thinking. “What ‘specific words’? What can be worth $30,000 just if you happen to glance at it??? This book has got to be straight smut. That deserves to be publicly burned, like a witch or a Beatles record.”

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you my friend. The words

$30,000 apiece

and

public burning

totally got my hopes up. This book did maybe not deserve either of these. Here is the basic plot, although, as a very lyrical novella, the word “plot” is used loosely:

Dirk McDonald knows that he’s gay. He’s known since he was young, when the carefree grandmother who raised him tells him it’s just a phase. He has a crush on his best friend Pup, but their relationship ends when Pup starts to date girls to hide his growing attraction to Dirk. “I love you, Dirk, but I can’t handle it.” Dirk lashes out, hiding his fear at himself and the seemingly cruel world around him by building himself an armor of punk rock persona and losing himself in music and violent dancing. Then one night after he tells some skinheads what he thinks about their swastika tattoos, he gets beaten up. Thus begins the much weirder second part of the book, where, in a weird dream/coma state Dirk’s great grandmother appears and tells him her story, and the story of his grandmother, and of his parents, two beat poets who “let go of life” one night in a car accident. Then at the end of the dream a genie appears and tells him about a man named Duck who, we’re supposed to presume, is his future love interest and reason to cling to life.

Aaaand that plot description was about five times racier than the book actually is. It’s only about 100 pages, and most of that is lyrical description. He doesn’t even say the word “gay” until he admits it to a ghost/hallucination of his father on page 86. There’s no sex, certainly nothing described graphically. Dirk mostly contents himself with yearningly thinking about kissing or just not being alone all the time. The word “faggot” is used a few times, mostly by the skinheads who beat him into unconsciousness. So I can’t really decide what “specific words” are “slanderous to all males”, especially if the people objecting and demanding $30,000 for emotional damage didn’t read the book carefully but only glanced through it since it was on display. Unless ladybugs and butterflies are slanderous to all men, because there WAS an awful lot of bug metaphors. Oh, and symbolic dancing. And beat poetry. So, yeah, public burning totes justified.

Seriously, I can’t even really find any “juicy parts” to quote. Unless you count this passage from the beginning, which is something he imagines while playing with his toy trains:

“He was on a train with the fathers–all naked and cookie-colored and laughing. There under the blasts of warm water spurting from the walls as the train moved slick through the land. All the bunching calf muscles dripping water and biceps full of power comforted Dirk. He tried to see his own father’s face but there was always too much steam.”

Later, he dreams of the same train, but instead of water coming out of the shower heads, it’s deadly, deadly gas. There’s a light sprinkling of anti-Nazism running through the book which seems slightly strange just because it remains unelaborated upon. I liked the language of this book. I was able to read it in about an hour, and it was almost like reading poetry. I was afraid it was going to be an angsty typical teen-problem novel, and, although the themes were similar, it had a very light touch, the exact opposite of the usual heavy-handed teen problem fare.

The worst I can say about it is the cover’s kind of blah:

A few titles on the list were challenged because parents thought that they were too easy for minors to get their hands on them on the library shelves. These include:

Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
Sex for Busy People: the Art of the Quickie for Lovers on the Go by Emily Dubberly
Lesbian Karma Sutra by Kat Harding
Mastering Multiple Position Sex by Eric Garrison
The Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein

In most of these cases, the library involved decided to implement special library cards for minors which would only allow children to check out restricted titles with parents’ permission rather than remove the books from their catalog. I’m sorry to report that I will not be reading these titles as part of the challenge, partially because my library owns only Joy of Sex for whatever reason, partially because of the massive Check Out Embarrassment Factor (no, librarians are not immune), and also because I am way more interested in the children’s/YA titles on the list. Also, I will not be looking at:

Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which was “pulled from the Menifee, California Union School District [this year] because a parent complained when a child came across the term ‘oral sex’. Officials said the district is forming a committee to consider a permanent classroom ban of the dictionary.”

Maybe it’s been awhile since these people were kids, because I’m shocked that they can’t remember that looking up dirty words is practically what the dictionary is for until you start studying for the SATs and need to know what adjuration means.

Anyway, I’m sure I will think up other credible excuses why I can’t read things as this project progresses. Each review will include a brief summary, why it was challenged, if I think it really should have been, and a mostly fabricated list of other reasons why I think the book might offend you (including awful cover art). I will try to include quotes of the juicy parts so you don’t even have to read it for yourself to find them!

Of course, their parents are always in the library, usually pretty close by. Often they’ve said something like, “You stay here and read for a moment; I’m going to the bathroom/get a boring adult book/argue with that librarian over whether or not I owe the library 15 cents for half an hour.” But even if the children have heard and acknowledged that information, after a few minutes of calm, they still freak out. For instance, yesterday a boy came to me in tears and after much coaxing he told me he couldn’t find his dad. Then after a little more coaxing he said his dad had told him he was going to the bathroom. This led to us both standing awkwardly outside the bathroom.

Me: Maybe you could poke your head in and say “Dad”?
Him: (shakes head, hugging self tightly and staring at the floor)
Me: Okay…. well…. I guess I could open the door slightly and call his name? Can you tell me his name?
Him: (shakes head again)
Me: Can you tell me your name? I can make an announcement for your dad to come to the front and get you.
Him: (shakes his head again)

Finally his dad came out of the bathroom. His son ran to him. The dad had this look like “Ummm…. what? I was gone for like five minutes.” I don’t think parents understand how big the library seems when you’re small, or fast time passes when you’re panicking. Also how, while it’s good that they teach their kids not to talk to strangers, it’s super annoying when I just want to know a first name so I can say something over the PA like “Will David’s dad please come to the front of the library” and have done with it.

I remember this panicky feeling from being younger. Or from a month ago when I too was abandon at the library. Steven and I had gone to Chapel Hill Public to get books and natch did not stay together due to his suspect literary preferences. After checking out my books, I wandered around looking for him in all the usual places (Cooking, Computers, Bad science fiction). Not finding him, I did a more thorough sweep of the entire library, including children’s section. Chapel Hill Library is almost painfully small, so I was pretty sure he was not in the building. They were having a book sale in the basement that day, so I went downstairs and wandered through the conference rooms piled with books of cookbooks from the 80s. But still no Steven. I waited in the lobby for a little bit, thinking he might be in the bathroom, and finally decided he must be waiting by the car. I had a little bit of trouble remembering where we’d parked, but, again, the Chapel Hill Public Library parking lot is not large, so I walked around the entire thing, with no sign of Trixie. Natch thinking she was hiding behind an SUV and I was not being careful enough, I walked around it four more times until I finally decided that STEVEN HAD TAKEN MY CAR AND LITERALLY ABANDON ME AT THE LIBRARY. I was the lostest of all lost children.

Naturally my first instinct was to go to the librarian, crying and unable to speak. I didn’t have my phone with me and did not have very much money either. I finally decided after deliberation to return the books I had just checked out and begin the long, long walk home.

Then Steven drove up and said that he hadn’t been able to check out because his fines were above five dollars and he’d tried to secretly go in search of an ATM because he was too embarrassed to tell me about his fines. I have no idea which part of this scenario is the most ridiculous. The part where he TOOK MY CAR WITHOUT TELLING ME or the part where fear of telling me about library fines is a semi-legit excuse.

1. Working and Cleaning Popcorn Machines

Now made with real fake butter!

These old-fashioned style popcorn machines are loud, messy, and verging on a health hazard, so naturally all libraries seem to have them. The popcorn is made with a suspiciously neon powder, the smell of which is supposed to “draw the most crowds” according to the packet. For some reason, most of the librarians at my new internship have little to no experience with the popcorn machine, so I stepped up to put my Vast Seminole Library Popcorn Expertise to good use. Frankly, I think most of them are pretending to not know how it works to get out of cleaning it. They will never know the joy of working a further seven hours with your hands covered in greasy metal burns and having everyone you talk to ask what smell is making them so hungry. It’s my new perfume, you guys!

2. Art Skillz
This skill is not just relegated to the land of children’s librarianship. Even reference librarians have to make signs and displays on occasion. However, coloring, cutting, and constructing puppets out of recyclables are all things they do not teach in even the children-focused grad school classes. It’s a pity because these skills are WAY, WAY more useful than taking a week to determine what kind of leader you are by taking personality quizzes and it will inevitably end in puppets that look something like this:

As found on Etsy and Regretsy.

3. How to Deal with Crazy People
For some reason, grad school assumes that (if they mention the actual patrons you’ll supposedly be serving, which is rarely) everyone who comes into the library will be friendly and affable, with a healthy thirst for knowledge and no fixed schedule. I think once my reference professor mentioned that sometimes people get grumpy if they’re in a hurry. No one has yet mentioned how sometimes you have to deal with the same drunk lady that comes in some Thursday nights, sobbing, and asking for Nancy Drew over and over, even after you’ve shown her the section twice.

Maybe she just couldn't get over the Clue in the Clock

No one talks about how to handle the woman who demands a book on divorce for a four-year-old, “preferably titled Because Daddy’s a Good-For-Nothing Ass“. Or the guy who hides in the stacks to shout Star Wars quotes at random intervals. Or the boy who systematically takes all the books about hurricanes, one by one, and hides them in various places around the room such as under the cushions of chairs or in the bathroom sink.

If I ever become Dean of a library school, I will institute at least one course in all of these things. Wall-moving, furniture arrangement, and soda pouring can be an extra credit project in the popcorn class.

More importantly, it means that I have to add a new job to my Possible Job Ideas list:
Twitter Librarian of Congress

How awesome would that be? I will be watching for that job posting and will apply by tweet to seem authentic.

Anyway, since I am nothing if not organized, I’ve decided to plan ahead and think of other possible awesome job ideas. To help me, I’ve assigned all my fifth graders to write five paragraph essays about “What would the best job ever be and why?” But so far all I’ve gotten were doctor and astrophysicist. I know, lame. When I was in fifth grade I would have totally written about either water slide tester or Disney princess.

Although I’m not entirely without hope:

Boy: Can it be ANY job?
Me: Anything. Even water slide tester.
Boy: I don’t know if that’s a real job.
Me: I think it is. But even if it wasn’t, made up jobs are okay too.
Boy: Alright, I’m going to choose shark.
Me: What?
Boy: Shark.
Me: Ummm… can you think of three reasons to write paragraphs about?
Boy: OF COURSE! You get to eat people, you get to swim around, AND you get to BE A SHARK.
Me: I know this class doesn’t have grades, but you just earned an A+.

So yeah, so far it’s looking like shark is the best bet.

I decided, since first day of class is never about anything you can’t look up online later anyways, to take notes in the form of a poem. I bet you can tell everything we talked about just from that. Two cool things:

1. He decided we didn’t have to buy the book because the bookstore didn’t order them. Once again my lack of initiative pays off!

2. One of the assignments is to answer questions on Yahoo!Answers and other social Q&A sites. I realize it will probably be impossible to limit myself to anything involving the Jonas Brothers and inane dating advice (preferably both), but a girl can dream.