Screw cockroaches

If there is ever a giant thermonuclear explosion that wipes 99% of life off the face of the planet, librarians will be the ones to survive.

Why, you ask? Consider this:

How do you treat your books? Do you treat them well, handling them only with clean hands and never, ever eating while reading or breaking the binding by opening the book too far? Now consider how you treat library books, which aren't yours and are probably already in declining conditions (or they will be soon, anyway)? Now consider this from the point of view of the average library patron.

You may consider yourself an average person, and you may be a library patron. However, this does not necessarily mean you are an average library patron.

The average library patron:

-reads a sign, then asks exactly the same question the sign answered

-asks to renew an item, even though it has a sticker on the front that says in big red letters THIS ITEM CANNOT BE RENEWED

-reshelves books in the wrong place (want to piss off your librarian? That's a good start)

-leaves piles of unwanted books/puzzles/hand puppets/movies on the floor because "they pay people to pick that up"

-pays a $75 fine with a shrug and an 'oh, well,' but argues for fifteen minutes over a ten-cent fine

-shows up five minutes before closing and takes ten minutes to decide on a movie, then remembers that the library card is sitting on the counter at home

[I swear to you, dear readers, I could not make this shit up.]

-allows his/her children (who are probably sick) to handle books with unwashed, jelly-sticky, snot-dripping hands

-pretends ignorance when the dog chews a book (I love dogs, but they have all kinds of nastiness in their mouths. They eat poop and dead birds, for God's sake!)

-doesn't clean a book when the baby spits up over it

Do you see where I'm going with this? Library books are NASTY. They are germ havens. Forget public toilets and trash cans; library books should be able to kill you if you walk in the damn building.

And yet...

Librarians don't get sick very much. When was the last time you saw a librarian sniffling? During cold season, there might be one or two. But librarians are part-time people. If we don't work, we don't get paid, and so we learn not to get sick. Not to hide getting sick, although that happens too, but somehow our bodies adapt to all these horrific germs infesting us day after day and we just don't get sick.

Cold season? Yeah, I got a bit of a runny nose.

Flu season? Yeah, my sister missed work for a week.

Heatstroke risk? Eh, the library's air-conditioned.

Outbreak of plague? Hm, we're not seeing as many patrons as we usually do.

War of the Worlds-style alien invasion? We've got some literature on that in the 200s.*

Thermonuclear explosion that takes out 99% of earthly life? I wonder if we should start issuing cards to cockroaches...

*A million bonus points to you if you get that joke.