My paternal grandmother was a librarian. I only got to see that set of grandparents once a year as they lived out of state. I fondly remember summers spent at their house watching That Darn Cat and The King and I on loop, hunting for water skippers in the back creek, and reading the entirety of the Peanuts comics.
Because my grandma was a librarian she was delighted to foster my love of reading. We made trips to the library every week. One summer when I was seven or so I got really into this kids series about princesses all named after gemstones, each had a unique magic power.
At the end of each book was a puzzle or some extra bit of lore to decode. All of them were easily copied down in some way. Until I got to Sapphire’s book. At the end of the story Princess Sapphire was in peril! She needed a hero to come save her from a terrible fate. And there, on the last page, was a decoder device. It needed to be cut out and assembled.
I had to help save the Princess!!! In the iron grip of a fever of imagination I immediately found scissors and started carefully cutting the page. The page warned only to use scissors with an adult present and I scoffed to think I needed supervision just for scissors! I was a hero!Her plight called to me from the pages, imaginings of how I would daringly rescue the beautiful sweet Princess Sapphire ran through my little brain-
And about halfway up the page toward my goal I froze. This was a library book. I couldn’t cut a library book! What was I doing?! Even now in my memory it stands as a glaring example of the first time I mastered impulse control. Tragically, too late.
I was distraught. My grandma had a sacred duty to books and I, villain that I was, had defiled a precious tome! I wallowed for some time in abject misery, experiencing the greatest amount of guilt my tiny body had ever previously held. I’d probably go to jail. For a crime as monumental as wielding scissors against a book I wouldn’t even get dessert in jail.
Gradually, I processed my way through the grief of my vile deeds. I couldn’t have the decoder, I slowly accepted. That might be punishment enough. And I had only cut the page halfway. So it was only half a crime... It wasn’t illegal to lie when you’d aborted an evil act, right?
I didn’t know but I didn’t want to face my grandma’s potential wrath. I have no memory of my grandma ever yelling at me. I waited until the next day to approach her.
“Grandma? I finished my book and when I got to the end I saw someone had cut the page! They probably wanted the decoder because I also want that but it was very bad to cut a book, wasn’t it?”
My grandma regarded me benignly. She carefully took the book to observe it and nodded. “It’s good to see that they stopped before they cut it all the way out. Let’s go tape this together, and then I can photocopy the page and we can make you a decoder.”
I was ecstatic. Rewarded for my honesty! I created and cracked codes for the rest of summer with the flimsy paper creation we’d made. I genuinely doubt my grandma believed that I wasn’t the perpetrator, but I loved that she acknowledged that the person responsible stopped.
