So last night I had school. My Personal Finance class to be exact. And since the term is starting to wind down, we were having some guest speaker mortgage expert come in and talk to us. So the last thing my instructor tells us before we leave last week is "Don't be late, because it's disrespectful to the speaker if you walk in late." Fair enough, right?
Well guess what? I was late.
It wasn't even my fault though. It was raining pretty hard outside, and as we all know, Portland, like, never gets rain or anything. So everyone was crawling on the freeway. Highly irritating, but anyway.
So I showed up to the college about ten minutes late. I really wasn't in the mood to be the one jackass who walks in late, and interrupts class. So I didn't go in.
But I couldn't miss class all together, because I had my big time research paper due. So I had to stick around so I could turn it in. I was going to try to just wait until someone left the classroom so I could just sneak in then. This never happened.
I didn't really know what to do. I tried to find the teacher's box so I could just turn my paper in there and the cruise, but his office area was locked. And because waiting outside a classroom for someone to leave class is mind-numbingly boring, not to mention kind of weird looking, I went to the MHCC library to chill for a bit.
Now it's been, like, a whole year since I last stepped foot in the library. And since I'm overly observant most all of the time, there were a few things that struck me as interesting and/or pathetic about the MHCC library. Here they are:
1. Real quick, the story about the history that me and this particular library have. The last time I stepped foot into the library was a bit of a scarring experience for me. You see those doors in the pic above? I hate those doors.
So sometime last year, I needed to go to the library. I was walking around campus, being all calm and cool and sexy, like I always am. I walk up to those doors and pull the door open. Except the door doesn't open. Huh. Weird. They must be closed, I guess. So I pull the door again just to check. Again, it doesn't move. Hmm. I'm thinkin' they're closed. But that's weird, it's during school hours and how does it help the students if the library is closed. That's pretty lame. I really needed to go to the library too. It just didn't add up. At this point, I was really confused.
Right about that exact time, as I'm standing four feet in front of the doors, a girl brushes her way past me and pushes the doors open. "It says push," she says to me. Oh no she didn't! Aww crap. Are you freakin' kidding me?? This was not happening, was it? Talk about the most humiliating thing that could happen to a guy. I tried to come up with some cool, witty, funny comment to ease the awkwardness, but it wasn't happening. There was no recovering from what had just happened. I don't think I've been that embarrassed since that day. It is definitely in the top 5 most embarrassing moments from my life.
So yeah, it was bad. And what made it about 100,000x worse? The girl that had just punked me practically was a Maria Menounos look-alike. I mean, she. was. HOT. And stuff like this never ever happens in front of ugly girls, am I right fellas?
2. As I walked around the library, looking for nothing in particular, I noticed how old most of the books were. I would bet that, like, 84% of the books in that library haven't been used, let alone touched, in at least 5 years. I felt like I was touring an old book museum, where all the books were ancient antiques and no one would dare touch them. It kind of made the library seem a little useless, but that could just be me.
3. There were a total of nine people on the computers in the library. Seven of them were on Myspace. I don't really know what that means, but it sorta added to the uselessness of the library. I mean, weren't libraries invented as a place for students to study and gain knowledge?
4. Because I had no real purpose for being in the library, except for killing time, I checked out the magazine selection. Or as fancy people call them, "periodicals." Magazines they did have: Ceramics Monthly, Asian Reporter, RN Magazine, Rolling Stone, China Today. Magazines they did not carry: Maxim, Stuff, or FHM. Let me repeat: they had friggin Ceramics Monthly and no Maxim in the whole place. This is unforgivable. I was very disappointed to discover this and left the "periodical" section immediately.
5. Why libraries still sort books by using the Dewey decimal system is beyond me. Have you seen the Dewey decimal system lately at all? It's totally jacked. I now can understand what it must be like for a crackhead when they try to find a book at the bookstore. And I was completely sober. Still couldn't make any sense of what I was seeing, whatsoever. So thanks, Melvil Dewey. You totally screwed up books and libraries, man. Thanks a lot.
And that was my adventures in the library last night.
