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My confession: Why I became a 'Guybrarian'

September 27, 2009 12:36 am

WHEN I TELL people what I do for a living, a now expected look crosses their faces, somewhere between a suppressed chuckle and a barely contained rolling-around-clutching-their- bellies guffaw.

"Librarian, huh?" they'll say, "Hmm, interesting." They'll attempt to sound polite and conversational, even intrigued. But I know what they're thinking. My manhood is suspect. "He probably macrames, too," the smirking expressions suggest. "Or bakes muffins on the weekends? Sniffles with some BFFs over chick flicks and Ben & Jerry's?"

In the public imagination, male librarians--guybrarians--rank somewhere in the neighborhood of male hairdressers, nurses, and ballet dancers (except those stereotype-busting Russians) on the Dubious Masculinity Scale. Somehow the idea of a grown man fretting over the Dewey Decimal System or priggishly reminding kids to "keep it down--this is the library" is disquieting, even appalling. (Which is why I do neither.)

My childhood provides no Kane-like clues (no effeminate Rosebuds crackling on any childhood-altering fires) as to how I ended up in such a gravely suspicious profession. I played sports--baseball, basketball, football. Had an electric guitar and wanted to be rock star like every other teenage boy. Heck, as a young man I even got into a few fights. (Yes, smarty-pants, the real fist-wielding variety. In bars, no less. The kind you "settle outside.")

In other words, I hit all the normal guy milestones in the appropriate order. How then to explain this whole librarian thing?

For starters, I've always enjoyed reading. Long ago, in those hazy, pre-Internet days, this was perfectly acceptable behavior for boys. Remember Boy's Life? Mad? National Lampoon? All magazines targeting boys. As I got older, I'd binge on the sports biographies (really hagiographies) rife in those less-critical times, before the warts-and-all bios became the standard. "The Babe Ruth Story." "The Mickey Mantle Story." "The Gale Sayers Story." (Sports biographies weren't noted for their creative titles.)

I read books about Jim Thorpe, Jackie Robinson, Joe Namath, Wilt Chamberlain, devouring one after another. I viewed reading sports biographies as a kind of job preparation, you see, since I knew--just knew--I was destined to be a legend of the gridiron, diamond, or court myself (maybe all three?). Ah, boyhood.

Ultimately, I hung up my cleats and glove, but the reading bug persisted. Huck Finn. Tom Sawyer. Ray Bradbury's sentimental sci-fi. Anything by Vonnegut. Television was no competition. There were only three channels anyhow, and all they showed were ditzy sitcoms, game shows, and the news. How much "My Favorite Martian," "Partridge Family," or "Password" could you reasonably watch? The (over)abundance of the digital age was still years away. Hell, we still used slide rules in math class.

Like other book-lovers before and since--particularly those with little financial sense--I majored in English. Lounging about and reading thick, ponderous novels? It sounded perfect. My career aspirations, you see, had changed. My sights were no longer set on the Baseball Hall of Fame; I'd decided to aim instead for a Nobel Prize. In literature. I was going to write books.

Well, writing books proved hard. (I guess; I never really, seriously tried.) I realized I liked the idea of the novelist--tweedy, given to snappy, ironic repartee, a little boozy--more than I liked the actual sitting-down-and-writing part.

So, after lots of detours, roads taken that should have remained untaken (way leads on to way, says Frost), I became an English teacher. Hey, I thought, I'll stand before groups of rapt--how naive was I?--students and talk about great books. Call it the Dead Poets' Society Delusion. Nonetheless, teaching English was rewarding. Plenty of students had plenty of interesting things to say. Many actually read the assigned reading. I was still working in a word- and book-rich environment.

And then my wife and I had kids. Started a family. Granted, later in life than most, but then again tardiness is my signature move. I lurch through life by fits and starts (or fitful starts: see above). So after-school became family time. My daughter and son, unlike their superannuated daddy, had an age-appropriate right to pursue their dreams. Those perpetual stacks of papers to be graded each evening--a job reality of the English teacher--conflicted with their right to unencumbered daddy time.

So the library, like a solemn, calming lighthouse, beckoned. In retrospect, I suppose I'd been drifting toward it for some time. Certainly I'd spent much of my free time in various libraries over the years. Why not work in one? It has proven a most sagacious decision, one of the better ones I've made in a lifetime of more questionable choices.

I still get to work with young people. I still get to talk about books and suggest good reads. Who knows, maybe I'll even check out a book to some future Nobel laureate.

Rob Huffman lives in Spotsylvania County. He tends the books at a Stafford County high school.