Literary Stoicism

In 1958, at age 14, I climbed the granite stones of our beautiful Carnegie Library and put in an appearance at the transom window overlooking the librarian’s desk within.
 
With a Howdy Doody mask over my face and with my gangly young appendages spread over the window as if, perhaps, a great otherworldly Praying Mantis had been flung against it, I clung to the glass. 
 
I was out to frighten, on a dare, our long suffering librarian, Alice Gould, to cause her to lose her historic composure, thereby allowing me to enshrine my name in infamy and in perpetuity among my peers who had nonchalantly and uncharacteristically gathered inside.  Each pretended mightily and unconvincingly at interest in the volumes of reference material before them and waited. 
 
I assembled my body parts and my expression into a frightening countenance and wedged myself even tighter onto the window ledge and into its tiny granite framed opening and loosened my grip long enough to draw my fingernails across the glass. 
 
The effect was chilling and in the crushing silence my younger brother Dick, among the assembled boys, issued a little fart.  Mrs. Gould, having read more into the unlikely assemblage of hooligans at the reference section than any of us had given her credit for, began a slow halting turn toward the boys and in an equally halting voice she delivered a kind of croaking and rhetorical interrogatory, “What fright in yonder window rakes?”
 
Her eyes, unblinking, remained fixedly upon the boys.  Theirs, blinking wildly, darted about.  Billy Philbrook gulped and a tiny cry escaped from his mouth, hanging open.  Suddenly, like a startled covey, they flew from the building—and from me.  From the tenuous perch where I clung, my glasses fogged up behind my Howdy Doody mask, unable to loosen even a finger to remove the mask, unable to see, unable to disengage, I seemed unlikely to have my name memorialized in quite the way I’d imagined. 
 
I wet myself just a tiny bit as I bleated a modest plea for help into the empty night before availing myself of Mrs. Gould’s offer of assistance, descending backwards, her strong hands reaching up to give my buttocks purchase.
 
I stood humbly before her, my mask askew but at least still concealing my identity.  “Phillip,” she said affectionately, “No doubt you’ve come to check out a book.  Let’s go inside and get you a library card.”  I removed my mask and crumpled it into a trash can as she ushered me inside.

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