I’m in the midst of Susan Orlean’s The Library Book, and it’s making me super sentimental about libraries and librarians, in specific.

When I was a sophomore gym was a required class. As a 6’3″ fat kid this was not the highlight of my schedule. Thankfully, gym was only every other day and it alternated with either keyboarding (what typing was called in 1987 by forward-thinking educators) or study hall. I could not get keyboarding to fit into my schedule and thus I had to alternate study hall.

I was never a fan of the study hall, and my only saving grace was that it took place in the library. Want to know what else was in the library? A computer lab. Want to know who saved my sophomore year? Ms. Esler, who was the queen of the computer lab. Because of her, I spent every other day in the computer lab typing up poems. I don’t think the poetry was her idea, but the typing on the computer was. I taught myself to type by typing up hundreds of poems (most of them flitched from Seventeen and YM). I don’t know homerow, but I can type a good 72 words a minute.