“Are you a reader?”

“Are you a reader?”
Should one admit to being a reader? That is the question.

“Are you a reader, sir?” she asked. Since I was standing in front of the door to the library it seemed pointless to deny it. (But many an other time to admit to being a reader was not the right answer.) In addition to the doors, there were other clues, my heavy spectacles, the round shoulders, the book bag; she might not be Sam Spade, but she had all the evidence she needed. She was not Sam Spade, but she was a security guard, one of three under the canopy. The canopy turned some of the rain, but it was wet, there was a wind blowing the rain under the canopy, and it was cold enough. I was already wet from the walk to the library. Humbly I had taken my place among the bedraggled others sheltering from the rain outside the door. Since rain and wind avoidance were the consideration they did not form a line, but I was careful not to crowd in front of anyone. It was about 9 am.
It had all started earlier that morning in our hotel room. I suggested that we go the library and have breakfast in the basement canteen there that catered to staff and visitors. We visitors without a staff card paid a higher price than the members of staff, but it was little compared to the prices in the hotel, and there was more variety I had noted in previous visits. It suited Kate, my wife, since her destination after breakfast was a museum near the library. So the plan was made. The elements had however not cooperated and there was a blowing rain on the late November day, hinting at the winter weather to come. We were both damp and hungry when we got there.
That morning, however, was the one day a week that the library opened later than usual. It was a fact I had not noted on my visits to the library on the previous, sunny days. Nor did it seemed had the others who were Stoically waiting for the opening under that canopy had realized it.
I have called it a ‘canopy’ but it was more than that. It was a sheltered entrance under the grand stair way that leads to the imposing front doors to the library. Down under the canopy was the everyday entrance, while the grand stairway was for grand entrances. This library was not just any library, as discerning Bleaders will have gathered, it was the Library of Congress, and the principle of its three buildings, the Jefferson, wherein lies the very grand Reading Room. http://www.loc.gov/index.html

My wife and I had paused to confer when we found the door closed and the people waiting, and in our conversation she decided to head on to the museum, and I said I would wait for opening to continue my work in the library.
The guard had noted our conference and may even have overhead our conversation. As Kate left, the guard, a woman, approached me and popped the question: ‘Are you a reader?’ I was slow to respond but I said yes, declaring I have a card and perhaps started to reach for my wallet. But no, she said, it was not necessary to me to show the Reader’s Card to her, but she would be happy to let me, a Reader, in and leave those others waiting! The gaggle of others looking on, were there to tour the building – tourists – and would have to wait for it to open to touring tourists, but we readers could and did go right in. They were couples and family groups, not a solitary Reader like me. As I said above, Wow! My chest swelled under the thoroughly wet rain coat and I am sure I strutted, if a round shouldered, near-sighted, overweight, normally shuffling scholar can strut. In I went and made my way to the Reading Room where I read!
No other time in my life has reading secured me such a social preference. As a four-eyed lad to begin with, being a reader just confirmed the low opinion real boys on the way to becoming real men had of me. Useless. Real girls on the way to becoming real women did likewise. Real boys, real men are not readers! This is a truth nearly beyond the word. It need not be said; it is known.
After all, do readers figure in beer commercials? Certainly not! Those blokes are all either playing sports, watching sports, or talking sports, or wishing they were. Face it. Readers are losers. All the women in those commercials are not flashing library cards, book club memberships, or Kindles. That is the proof from the popular culture. What more do you want?!
Not enough proof! My, my. When was the last time a candidate for an important public office, like premier, prime minister, governor, senator, or president established rapport with the electorate by going on about a book being read here and now? When was that ….? Not at all, I should think. Even the mere suspicion that a candidate is a reader is enough to send shock-jocks into turbo-charged outrage. Can anyone trust a candidates who gets ideas from books rather than from a face full of grass on a football field? The answer to this rhetorical question is “NO!” Stan Zemanek, Alan Jones, Don Imus, this they know.
Reading is solitary and Nerdom is the road well travelled from four-eyes to reading to social misfit. ‘What have you read lately?’ or ‘Did Tolstroy really need that last chapter in Anna Karenina?’ these are not small talk at a dinner party or pick up lines at a disco – not that I have any personal knowledge of these assertions being a proven Nerd. But I suspect no hostess wants a reading test over the entree. And I am pretty sure that the Beau featuring the front page of Celebrity This Instant magazine, whom ever he may be this instant, did not get a green light from the equally transitory Belle of that same magazine because he was widely read. (Whoa, Bleaders! Don’t go looking for Celebrity This Instant magazine, I just made it up. That is the kind of sneaky thing Readers do: make things up.)
The quest to control my Reader’s figure sees me pushing pedals on an exercise bike mornings at the local gym. Here I compile a sorely needed sense of virtue from those pedals with no apparent change in my figure, but I also get a taste of the day’s popular culture from the wall of television screens tuned to the channels Nerds never watch by choice. I am a bit vague about what they are. I just know they are not the ABC or SBS. But each day for about an hour I can follow a bit of what goes on two of them. I say follow because a merciful God insures the sound is muted. I see serious looking people, well adults anyway, and they seem to be talking about all manner of things, I infer from the guests who come and go and the visuals, from wigs, Beau and Belle as above, cooking, tricks to gain wealth while remaining stupid, shopping and more, how to win great stuff and do nothing, but never once have I see any of these Role Models with a book in hand. Now perhaps an author has been a guest and promoted a book, and I just missed it. But even so that is not quite the point. The point is that these Role Models who host these programs do not present themselves in any way, shape, or form to be … Readers. (See above about Real Men and Real Women.)
By the way, I make a very large and very honourable exception for Oprah Winfrey but she does not grace the television screens I see.

http://www.oprah.com/book_club.html