Mindy had the right name for the job but not the look. She had gone into library science because she loved books. She loved their looks, their smell, their feel, and most of all, their content.
Though she had excelled in her program, it still surprised her when Middlesburg, a town boasting a whopping population of eighteen hundred souls, had hired her as a full-time librarian. The other eighty-six libraries she had applied to had all given her an interview based on her marks. None had offered her a position.
Mindy didn’t look like a librarian. She looked like a linebacker. She came from a family of what some described as “sturdy women.” She had hated how she looked in middle grade but embraced it in high school. She had joined the football team. After her mother had taken the school board to court.
Mindy’s academic proficiency had paralleled her prowess on the football field. In high school, she had been a force to be reckoned with. She had given up football in university, exchanging it for the part-time job she needed to stay afloat. She had missed playing.
Middleburg’s town council helped Mindy find an apartment near the library. After she had settled in, she decided it was time to meet her boss and coworkers, though the job didn’t start for another week. She walked the two blocks to the library.
The recently renovated, two-storey building suggested that the town valued literacy. Mindy liked that. A little nervous, she had to stop to take a breath before passing through the double doors into the library’s air-conditioned interior. She took in the computer stations and the children’s section, in which a librarian read to a group of toddlers and parents.
As she approached the lending desk, the youngish-looking man sitting behind it smiled and called into a small room behind him, “New librarian’s here.”
Mindy startled, wondering how he knew who she was, then remembered that she stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. However, the smile with which the man greeted her and the delight on the face of the woman who hurriedly exited the room to meet her banished any embarrassment she might have felt. That, and the fact that the woman, who had to be Leslie, the head librarian, looked like an older version of Mindy.
The three librarians quickly fell into a comfortable discussion in librarian-speak. It didn’t take long for Mindy to realize that the Middlesburg public library was the home she had been looking for all her life.
This story came from a group of prompts from Reedsy. The general theme was to write a story that somehow related to a library or the sharing of books. I hadn’t looked at the April prompts when they came in. Apparently April 16th was National Librarian Day in the U.S. I missed it, but took this opportunity to honor librarians a little late.
In addition to the prompt, I was thinking about how people are often excluded from activities and professions because they don’t have “the right look.” At its most negative, this look is determined by gender, physical attributes, ethnicity, or other traits that have nothing to do with a person’s ability to engage in those activities.
I almost gave Middlesburg a women’s football team but thought better of it. To suggest Mindy was only hired because she was seen as an asset for that team would have diminished both her and this story.
Oh! And I couldn’t find a single image of a female football player on any of the free photo sites I use.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Mindy’s story. Please leave a comment!
I've started so many responses. There are just too many examples of people being judged by colour or age or ethnicity. I liked this story because I know there are just as many positive experiences but we don't hear about them enough. Keeps up my faith in human nature!!
Yay, Mindy. I have to admit... in the very beginning I had her all girly girl 😂 Thats not a typical Librarian either... I like your story better.