I was hoping

Every October, I am allowed to be a big, huge, noticeable nerd-type. The first weekend in October hosts the annual "friends of the library" booksale at our local, you guessed it, library.

Yes, I am not only a friend OF the library, but friends WITH the library. I will spare you a diatribe about bookstores and libraries being havens for creativity, imagination and solace.

I will take notice of something else: a kinship among readers. After work I drove by the library to pay our annual $5 Friends of the Library membership fee. This fee enables us an early preview of the books for sale. A steal in our minds, in our nerdy minds, that is.

The volunteers manning the table greeted us with open arms as if to say, "Welcome to our club. Welcome, reader, welcome." They giggled and teased among themselves as if they were old friends. Perhaps they were. Maybe they were members of a reading club (which I have always wanted to start or be a part of.) Maybe they worked together to organize this event each year. Whatever it was, there was an undeniable comaraderie. It wasn't the kind that you feel among closed cliques. It was more like a club that wanted new members and they were recruiting you for their team.

I got the same reception when I went to dig through the rows and rows of books. I'd pick up a book to peruse the cover more closely and I would get a nod and a "Oh, she's good" from the volunteer gently placing even more books onto the already crowded tables.

I felt at home, somehow, as if I'd found "my kind" and they welcomed me. It's nice to belong, even if it is to a library.

I shot the photo above at the booksale in the fiction section. I am still getting some strange looks whenever I pull out the digital and start shooting not people, but things, but I think I snuck this one by them.