Man Trapped In Library For An Hour; Burgess Meredith Scoffs

By Akela Talamasca on March 17th, 2009

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A 26 year old man suffered a panic attack when he looked up from his engrossing book and discovered he’d been locked in at the library, as reported by the Metro. He was freed when he contacted his wife, but had to be taken to the hospital to treat his attack.

Now, while the article in question is extremely short, it does serve to raise a few questions. First of all, what book was the man reading that so enthralled him that he didn’t notice that the library staff was wandering about closing up shop for the night, doubtlessly calling to each other things like “See you tomorrow, Fran” and “Don’t forget to check the carrels for people so they don’t get locked in and suffer panic attacks, because that might cause them to sue us”? There is no evidence to support this, but I’m willing to bet it was either “Finnegan’s Wake”, because that friggin’ thing is completely impenetrable, or “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook”, simply for the delicious irony.

Second of all, you might not be able to restrain yourself from immediately opening and reading a good book once you’ve gotten your hands on it at long last, but come on, man, this is a library. The whole purpose of a library is to enable you to borrow a book and take it with you. Sitting down to read it right there kind of defeats the purpose, wouldn’t you say?

Third of all, how did the library miss this guy? This is a staff specially trained to deal with rectangular, inanimate objects. They should be able to recognize a human being; even one sitting completely still.

And fourth of all, if I’m so into my book that I don’t even notice I’m being locked in, I’m going to relish the opportunity and dive right the hell back into that book! Remember that famous Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough At Last”, featuring Burgess Meredith as a man who had no time to enjoy the books he’d amassed? He would beat this guy about the head and shoulders with volume M of the Britannica for wasting this chance to be alone with a building full of books. Mark my words: we’re going to see some terrible new legislation pass, requiring incoming library visitors to be modded with microchips that broadcast their locations at all time, just so this doesn’t happen again. Me, I’ll stick to the Internet for my reading pleasure.