When my son, Daniel, was young, I took him to Norway Memorial Library to get his first library card. He stood on a small wooden stool at the checkout counter so he could see the card being prepared. I signed a form confirming that I would be accountable for my son’s items. After a bit of typing, the librarian, with a smile, handed over the card. As Dan stepped down from the stool, the card slipped out of his hand. He stooped to pick it up, but couldn’t find it.
I tried to help.
“Take off your shoes,” I said. “Maybe it fell into one of them.”
Nope.
I took off my shoes, just in case. Nope.
Maybe it fell into his shirt. Or my shirt. Nope. Nope.
We picked up the stool and looked under it. Nothing.
The card had simply disappeared. It was creepy and perplexing. Dan, of course, was devastated. The librarian told him not to worry, she would make him another card.
That disappearing library card haunted us for years. And it reminded me of an experience I had when I was Danny’s age.
My mother, my brother, and I lived, not in Maine, but in Oklahoma. I was a free-range little kid who was often out and about on my own.
One day as I was walking beside a long, brick building, an old man with a noisy crutch was a few yards behind me. I wasn’t frightened, I could easily outrun him if need be. And I kind of liked the thump, drag, thump, drag as he struggled along. I turned the corner of the building, expecting to hear the man turn the corner, too. But he didn’t.
I walked back and glanced around the corner to see if he was okay. The man wasn’t there. The building had no ground-level windows or doors, and the long stretch of sidewalk was empty. I looked across the wide street. Not there. No car had come along to pick him up. He had simply vanished.
For years, I tried to imagine where the man could have gone. It befuddled and disturbed me. As did the mystery of Danny’s library card. There was no rational explanation for either.
Maybe the card fell into another dimension. Maybe the man with the crutch was there. Maybe his name was also Daniel. Maybe he was thankful and amazed at the unexpected gift of a library card that suddenly appeared.
I never resolved the mystery of the disappearing man. The library card, however—years after it’s vanishing—suddenly reappeared. Some renovations were done at the library, including new shelving and a new checkout counter.
As the old counter was disassembled, they began by removing the molding at the bottom. When they pried it off, there was Danny’s long-lost card. It had somehow fallen vertically into the almost imperceptible slot between counter and molding.
I was a little sad that the old man, wherever he was, hadn’t been using my son’s library card all those years.
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