A Monday morning chuckle from the Pioneer Press Bulletin Board this morning.
Will The Library Let You Borrow That Book? It’s ‘TOO SOON TO TELL.’
Pioneer Press, Article Last Updated: 04/01/2007 08:24:35 PM CDTI finally made it down to the new library in Stillwater yesterday. It’s been open now for an embarrassingly long time, but I haven’t been able to get there.
Anyway, after selecting a few books and chatting about the beautiful new library with an employee, I asked her if she could check my books out for me or if I needed to go downstairs to the main desk to do it. She pointed over to a do-it-yourself scanner and said: ‘You can do it right over there. Let me know if you need any help.’
Being a woman of the ’90s … oops, I mean ’00s … I figured: ‘I should be able to tackle this with no problem.’ So I walked over and scanned my card. The machine said ‘SWIPE YOUR FIRST BOOK,’ or words to that effect (not to be confused, of course, with ‘Steal This Book,’ so popular in the ’60s.)
After ‘swiping’ my book, the machine came back with a prompt that said ‘TOO SOON TO TELL,’ so I swiped it again, more slowly this time, and again saw ‘TOO SOON TO TELL.’ After trying a third time, and coming up with the same prompt, I looked down disgustedly at the machine, then at my book … and felt my cheeks turning red as I noticed the title of my book was ‘Too Soon to Tell,’ by Calvin Trillin. . .