Stamps and Selling Out

I forgot that I used to really want to be a librarian when I was little. I think it was mostly because I always loved their stamps, the ones that changed with date and made the huge GAJOONK noise when they stamped the slip of paper in the back of your book with the due date. I also wondered what it was they did when they weren't checking out books - what happens behind the wall behind the desk? The have ALL the books that everyone wants but have to be on the waiting list for, the popular books that wait up on the shelves with post-it's that are scrawled with a last name or even the simple word, "HOLD."

But beyond the secret life of librarians, I was also thinking about the Miss America pageant today. Well, that one or the Miss United States Pageant - one has a bathing suit competition and one doesn't, making the latter seem slightly more legitimate when it claims to be a "scholarship opportunity." Seriously, what are they winning scholarships for? Anyway I was probably thinking about it because a girl my family knows is the next Miss Connecticut, and she's actually pretty smart and dignified so I'm wondering what it's like for her. And then I got to thinking, "If I were in the Miss USA Pageant, what would my talent be?" While I can think of plenty of things I'm good at, they're not really things that can be displayed on a stage on national television. I'm good at things like drawing and listening and being sarcastic and wondering if it's possible/worth it to buy a subscription to iTunes. I wouldn't be able to do ballet, or do some cheerleading moves or something, and singing is just not happening (still not really sure why I'm so mind-blocked against singing, but I'll figure that one out).

It's just that those talents that are supposed to make or break the candidates in the Miss USA Pageant aren't really about talent at all. They're more about selling yourself for entertainment and getting the most rise out of the crowd. Who cares if you can paint worth a damn if you can't twirl a baton on stage? Half of those talents have to just be things that the contestants learned specifically for the competition. They all wind up having the same talent, then, which is to be able to please the crowd - some can just be more entertaining, more creative and more ingenious than others in how they go about doing it.

The depressing thing about librarians these days is that they don't have stamps anymore. It's all bar codes and laser scanners now - no inkpads, paper slips or date stamps in sight. Maybe I'll just finagle a way to get me one of those GAJOONK stamps and use it to date all my notes, papers and the letters I write to my grandmothers...