Act 2, Scene 16: “Competitive Child Reading”

S sends TRL on a mission: get C & E signed up for the reading session at the SB library. Apparently these 45-minute toddler book reading series are the hot thing in town, and to avoid getting closed out one had to arrive at 10 am on the designated Friday in order to sign up in person.

TRL pulls in front of the library and in disbelief he sees a line of women and strollers snaking out the library door, along the sidewalk and out to the corner. It was like U2 tickets had just gone on sale.

Fuck, he curses himself. It was one minute to ten and he was still late it seemed.

He noses the car into a spot at the side of the library and marches out to join the line. By the time TRL steps behind the last person the stroller conga line had already retreated back inside the library, a good sign: it was moving. But he realizes it still stretches down a long hallway and around a curve, disappearing and possible snaking for miles and miles around the library’s book shelves, reference desks and old people reading newspapers with magnifying glasses.

He shakes his head. It was like a fucking rock concert, and he would never even wait this long for tickets to a concert. Instead, he would use contacts. But he had no inside people who could line him up with toddler reading club tickets, and he didn’t see any scalpers hanging around the library.

So he takes a breath and waits. He smiles at the woman dressed in polyester blue pants and a polyester-cotton green top pushing a stroller and two year-old in front of her. He smiles at the two women chatting together who line up in back of him - at least he wasn’t the last person now. But no one engages him in conversation.

In ten minutes, at least 15 other people join the line. Aside from an exceptionally fat man who has a manic smile pinned on his face as he pushes a stroller bearing a little boy, everybody in the line were women, and everybody seems to know one another, or at least share some secret quality that allows them to talk together. But nobody wanted to talk to TRL. Was it because he was a man, and one without a child in tow? Were people wondering why he was in line? Was he creepy?

Or was it the way he was dressed, New York City-hip shoes, San Francisco-relaxed jeans and T-shirt, rather than corporate dry cleaned or suburban casual (blue jeans taking the “blue” part much too literally, and sneakers with too much white)?

Not even the fat man who he smiles at and gives a head nod to, a time honored man-hi, will engage him in conversation.

He is finally the next person for sign-up, only two feet away from the sign-up desk, and he feels a rush of excitement and accomplishment.

Hi. Two 19-month olds, C & E, he tells the librarian.

She looks him over. TRL finds it ironic that she actually has a string connected to her glasses to hold them when she takes them off. It is so stereotype. She smiles at him, prints “C” and “E” in two available slots on her sign-up sheet and looks back up. That was it, realizes TRL. No tickets, no balloons dropping from the ceiling, just the names on a sign-up sheet. He wonders why he couldn’t just do this online.

TRL turns and as he leaves, walking down the line, he smiles at the people still waiting, hoping that the reading sessions will be full soon. He needs the list to be closed out to make this a true triumph. It wasn’t his fault if these people hadn’t arrived on line early enough. This was war. He who got a place for his children wins. And if everybody got a place, there would be no true winners.

Next year he aims to bring a cooler, chaise lounge and sleeping bag to camp out the night before.