“Times my mother stood up for me” excerpt from Mitchell Albom’s For One More Day.
“I am nine years old. I am at the local library. The woman behind the desk looks over her glasses. I have chosen 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I like the drawings on the cover and I like the idea of people living under the ocean. I haven’t looked at how big the words are, or how narrow the print. The librarian studies me. My shirt is untucked and one shoe is untied.
“This is too hard for you,” she says.
I watch her put it on a shelf behind her. It might as well be locked in a vault. I go back to the children’s section and choose a picture book about a monkey. I return to the desk. She stamps this one without comment.
When my mother drives up, I scramble into the front seat of her car. She sees the book I’ve chosen.
“Haven’t you read that one already?” she asks.
“The lady wouldn’t let me take the one I wanted.”
“What lady?”
She turns off the ignition.
“Why wouldn’t she let you take it?”
“She said it was too hard.”
“What was too hard?”
“The book.”
My mother yanks me from the car. She marches me through the door and up to the desk.
“I’m Mrs. Benetto. This is my son, Charley. Did you tell him a book was too hard for him to read?”
The librarian stiffens. She is much older than my mother, and I am surprised at my mother’s tone, given how she usually talks to old people.
“He wanted to take out 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne,” she says, touching her glasses. “He’s too young. Look at him.”
I lower my head. Look at me.
“Where’s the book?” my mother says.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Where’s the book?”
The woman reaches behind her. She plops it on the counter, as if to make a point by its heft.
My mother grabs the book and shoves it in my arms.
“Don’t you ever tell a child something’s too hard,” she snaps. “And never-NEVER-this child.”
Next thing I know I am being yanked out the door, hanging tightly to Jules Verne. I feel like we have just robbed a bank, my mother and me...”