© 2003 Brian Hodges - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

have the house to myself today. Lauren is out at the library doing research for a paper she's writing about post-partum hematoma, or something midwifery-esque. I'm so proud of that girl. I mean, I haven't done library research since high school. And even then, a pubescent boy's idea of research is pulling out the "B" volume from the medical texts and ogling the pictures of naked ladies with your friends. I recently edited an educational video for elementary students, about how to use the library. Did you know that they don't use card catalogues anymore? I feel lost just walking into a library now. There are a lot of books in there. How does anybody get anything done?

Two factors contributed to my loss of library skills. First, my graduation from high school coincided perfectly with the great internet explosion. Second, I was a Film/Television major at a college for "Communications and the Performing Arts." My final exam was "go make a movie." Typical homework consisted of, "Watch Independence Day and write a critique." Any research I ever needed was found on countless web pages from the comfort of my dorm room. Some of them even listed book references. I'd make up a bibliography, turn in my "Comparison of A Weekend at Bernie's and Hamlet" then go watch X-Files.

High school kids, please don't misunderstand me. I used actual books too. My roommate had like seven editions of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, a wellspring of information about everything from the Big Bang Theory to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. The perfect source for… well, another source.

Of course, I wasn't studying law or medicine or anything like that. I look at these gigantic, lead-heavy medical texts that poor little Lauren has to lug around every day, and think, "Better her than me." I suppose subjects like that are too big and dense to find on the internet. What poor schmuck would want to spend hours and hours transcribing all that stuff into HTML? So Lauren really is stuck with the old library standby.

Even though I don't use them for any practical purposes, libraries still fascinate me in the way steam trains or ghost towns fascinate others. Especially older libraries like in New York or Boston where the architecture is just a little bit mystifying. They each seem to have at least a dozen stairwells, all leading to different places. All over the building you find little nooks and hallways that don't go anywhere, and rooms that, apparently, nobody has entered for several years.

Many a porno scene have taken place in rooms like this. The sexy librarian comes in to return the Kama Sutra to its proper place and spots a strapping young man reading Ivanhoe. They start talking about the Dewey Decimal System and before you know it, they're going at it right on top of the shelves. Never happened. Yet another stupid example of life not imitating art.

These rooms are always the places where people end up discovering original manuscripts and sketches from really famous historical people, then selling them on E-bay for a million dollars. I always imagine opening up some really old dusty book and having the second Mona Lisa fall into my lap.

That's what I'm going to do. When I become a famous writer, I'm going to stick a bunch of humor columns inside an old book for somebody to find a hundred years later. A really boring book that nobody would ever pull off the shelf like, "The Economic and Social Effects of 16^th Century Prussian Rocking Chairs on the 17^th Century English Middle Class." Anybody who's forced to write a term paper about that, deserves a laugh and a million bucks.

I'm sure historians from NYU will hotly debate the columns' authenticity. They'll carefully examine each line, analyzing the subtle Hewlett Packard printer strokes, circa 2003. Noting the misuses of, commas, the incomplete sentences, the lack of grammar. "Yes!" they will declare to the world, "We have found the lost Hodges anthology, including such inspired works as, Why Do I Get Hangnails; The Funny Thing About Spoons; and My Days as a Hall Monitor."

One day, maybe students will avoid the library while researching me from the comfort of the internet.