Fourteen Points

People don’t.

What’s worse, they’ll tell me that they did return the book.  Or that they loaned it to a neighbor who has since moved out of the country.  Or they’ll deny that they even borrowed the book in the first place.

As if that isn’t bad enough, what about this:  books returned dog-eared.  Dog-eared!!!  Or with a round coffee-cup stain on page 12.  Or with the dust jacket missing.

Then, when I - - sinless, flawless, perfect human being, book-lover and –returner that I am -- fix these booknappers with a steely eye, they actually look hurt or annoyed or angry, trying to make me feel petty and miserly.

Petty?  Miserly?  When a book is unreturned, the only feeling in my breast is one of absolute fury…the same kind of fury that Beethoven must have felt when he wrote his great piano composition, “Rage over a Lost Penny.”

Recently I spent an entire morning searching for The Right Stuff.  I wanted to reread that uproarious passage where Annie Glenn refused to go on television after her husband’s space flight.  This section, depicting Lyndon Johnson’s monumental wrath, was worth the entire price of the Tom Wolfe book.  And where is The Right Stuff now?  Probably tossed carelessly on a coffee table somewhere in Lower Slobovia.  Or propping open a slamming door.  Maybe even --  perish the thought -- mixed up with (cringe) damp towels in a bathroom clothes hamper.

Another treasure missing from my home is the tender C. S. Lewis book, A Grief Observed.  After my husband’s death, my best friend sent it to me and wrote comforting words on the flyleaf.  Weak character that I am, why did I let it get away?

And who among you out there has my Something Beautiful for God -- the story of Mother Teresa -- by Malcolm Muggeridge?  And who absconded --  no more euphemisms like “borrowed” – with my Atlantic High by William F. Buckley -- one of the finest books I ever read?

Listen, Aunt Jane, I saw you last month browsing through the volumes of my 11^th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Yesterday I wanted to look up something about the Celts and discovered to my horror that Volume V is missing.  Bring it back.  Now.  I don’t care how much money you have or that I am your favorite niece.  Cut me off without a cent if you wish.  But bring back that volume.

Is all of the above over-reaction?  Maybe.  But hold on.  There is hope.  Right after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died, her son, John F. Kennedy, Jr., came outside to talk to the news reporters gathered there.  He said that his mother had passed away -- surrounded by her family, friends, and books.

Family.  Friends.  Books.  These three.  And the greatest of these….

Now I’m having second thoughts about you booknappers.  Whatever books of mine you have not returned -- that’s okay.  I forgive you.  But, please, since you have not returned them, at least be sure you read them.