I don't know if there are any statistics to vindicate my opinion, but I have an extremely deeply rooted opinion that hot weather, truly sweltering weather, makes people crazy.  And it's not just the whole 'three days in the desert and you start seeing ice cream stands' kind of crazy.  We've been topping 100 on the thermometer for the past few hundred years, or at least since the middle of July.  As if in synchronization, insanity begins to show glimpses of itself, finally revealing its face in all of its glaring glory just as the needle quivers over the '100' mark.  And then, when all outdoor activity is rendered impossible by threats of dehydration, heat stroke, and death, everyone simultaneously descends upon the library. 
If I or any of my co-workers actually knew how to play poker it is a given that we could never play each other; after a few days like these past few, we all know the stress induced tics and muscle spasms of the others.  In a group-therapy kind of way it brings us a bit closer together; something about the shared sympathy among soldiers as you watch a building full of heat-crazed 'people' rattling the bars of their cages. 
Think I'm exaggerating?  Let me take you down the rabbit-hole, then......

Just the other day, any typical day, we had a swarm of children, led by none other than Conan the Barbarian himself, fall on us in the wrath of boredom.  I grabbed my whip, chair and black top-hat.  "Don't turn that off, please!"  "Don't press that button!"  "Stay on your side of the counter, please!" "No running!"  "Don't stand up on the couch, it'll tip over.....Actually, you know what, go ahead.  Have at it with that one....."  "When did you last wash your hands?"  "Where are your shoes?"  "Where is your mother?!" "Don't point the scanner at your eyes unless you want grow up to be Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder......"  etc. etc.  Having sucked down about five bottles of water that day, due to the heat, I took a short break and walked back to the staff restroom.  The door was closed and I heard the sound of running water, and knowing that two of my co-workers were at the front desk, I assumed it was the third.  I walked back out to the desk, patiently awaiting my turn with some slight sense of building panic.  Suddenly, the third co-worker appeared.  Now, I'm definitely more of an English person than math, but I can count to four.  Being neither a math person nor Sherlock Holmes in the powers of deduction, I was still able to grasp that something was amiss....all four were at the desk, but water was running in the restroom......did I really want to know?  I knocked on the door, and, receiving no answer, proceeded to open it.  No one.  Nothing.  Only the toilet is making a rather strange sound......I removed the 'lid,' but saw nothing amiss.  I went back out to inform my boss, and was detained by a patron.  Finishing with the patron, I made my way towards the back, only to be met by a sound which seemed somewhat out of place.  I didn't know why, or even what the sound was reminiscent of....Then it hit me.  The eruptions of Mt. St. Helen and Old Faithful.  A new island being created in the tropics.  The sound of a toilet spewing water ceiling high.  Panic and disgust pushed aside, we combined efforts and attempted to stem the angry tide.  The floor was now half an inch deep; fortunately it was clean water.  4:30 found me with mop and bucket, swabbing deck.  As I'm attempting to soak up the remains of Hurricane Katrina of the public library, a co-worker stepped back and informed us that there had been a shooting in the neighborhood and the perpetrator was not as yet apprehended; the police suggested we lock the doors.  Great, I am shoe-deep in toilet water and now on lock-down.  At 4:30.  Thirty more minutes and I would've been home-free.  Just then I heard the metallic tinkling of the ice-cream truck making its afternoon rounds.  Playing, I kid you not, Christmas carols.  "Deck the Halls," to be precise.  It was like something straight from hades.  For some reason the metallic sound of mechanized music reminds me of some 1950's horror movie.  You can just see it: half a dozen or so All-American be-sweatered and saddle-oxford sporting Bobby-Soxers enjoying a day at the fair.  That same metallic tinkling commences, strangely juxtaposed and ominously foreshadowing the coming slaughter.  Finished with the floor, I went back to the counter, where my boss was, to inform her of as much, and ask if Public Works was on its way.  (Hope springs eternal.)  As I approached, I became privy to a conversation between my boss and a child who was in the act of asking my boss what her favorite swear word is......Today's not a good day to ask that, Tonto, you might get an answer.  I was called away by a man who needed to apply for a library card.  As I was filling out the information in our system, he began casually chatting.  "You know," he said, "I don't think I could work in a library....."  Apparently this was not a rhetorical statement, as he waited in vain for a moment for me to ask why.  "I would get too bored.....Just sitting here all day like this, and I don't really like to read that much......"

Today I began a P.G. Wodehouse novel; as I was reading I began to think how much of a book depends on the first lines, and likewise, how much depends on the last lines.  So, I began to think-what are some of my favorites?  There are of course, the standards: "It is a truth universally acknowledge, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."  "Two houses/both alike in dignity/In fair Verona where we lay our scene/From ancient grudge break to new mutiny/Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean." "All children, except one, grow up." "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..." "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."  "The Opera Ghost really existed." "It was a dark and stormy night." (Okay, just kidding about that last one......)  I started thinking, though, how many other, lesser known, but equally great opening and closing lines there are:  "Three hundred and forth-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today the Parisians were awakened by the sound of loud peals from all the bells within the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town." (Hunchback of Notre Dame)  Although everyone knows the opening line from "A Tale of Two Cities," I personally think the last line is the most powerful: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."  (Of course this could have something to do with the fact that I have been completely in love with Sidney Carton since I was thirteen-I still think Lucy Manette was a total idiot for not marrying him......)  "When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.  It was true, too."  And, simply because this book scared the absolute be-jeebies out of me the first time I read it-"The offing was barred by a black band of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness." ("Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad)  "Once there was a tree....and she loved a little boy." ("The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein-the absolute epitome of what every children's book should aspire to be.)  "Pain provides an opportunity for heroism; the opportunity is seized with surprising frequency." ("The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis)  "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."  ("A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean.)  And, although it is a paragraph rather than a sentence, I also love the last paragraph of that novella, "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.  I am haunted by waters."  (Have to love it, don't you?)  "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."  ("The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis)  "Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently."  ("The Horse and His Boy" by C.S. Lewis)  Another paragraph I love is from Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant"- "Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden.  He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child.  And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.  'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant; 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.' 'Nay!' answered the child; 'but these are the wounds of Love.' 'Who art thou?' said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.  And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."  "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation."  "And for the support of this Declaration, with firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, or Fortunes, and our sacred Honour."  "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"  "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measures of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
This is why, when writing papers all through my school years, the introduction and the conclusion were the most difficult to construct.  I mean really, with that level of precedent set, what can you really do with a paper on the effects of the Bon Marche department store on the retail world of mass-production consumerism?

(Atticus and Scout Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird, the BEST book/movie ever in existence....seriously.)

Although I know it is now past Independence Day, and I therefore should be posting about history and our nation (that will come, never fear), I still have yet to post about Father's Day.  Let me just say, my mama is my best friend, but I think I'll always still be a Daddy's girl.  Plain and simple.  I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time and finding Atticus a very familiar character.  I'm not sure how he managed it, but my father was quite a bit like Atticus in that he did not expect my sister and I to behave like adults, but neither did he treat us like children, if that makes any sense.  It's one thing I've learned to appreciate very much as I've grown older.  However, there have been some amusing incidents between my father and I during those transitional years; I suppose it is just inevitable that parents will invariably revert to 'parenthood' no matter the number of years you've long since stopped wearing pigtails.  We were sitting around the dinner table one evening, my mother, father and I.  I was saying something to my mother, apparently in a very animated fashion, and, being my mother's daughter, I was using hand gestures to accentuate my statements.  Not "You'll shoot your eye out!" style gestures, just vague waves of the hand.  My father watches me for a moment, reaches across the dinner table, takes the fork out of my unresisting-due-to-shock grip, places it on the table and explains simply, "You'll hurt yourself."  The 'amusing' point of this story?  I was a full time college student managing a job at the public library and another at the college, two time-consuming jobs at church, and a few minor photography jobs on the side. This memory relapse is apparently common at some point to all fathers, as so deftly illustrated by this scene from "Father of the Bride."

It is common also, however, for daughters always to remain their father's daughter.  For some reason, I'm always more pleased when I can make my father smile than anyone else; it's always been that way, I suppose.  A couple of months ago I was sitting in the breakfast room in a hotel in Illinois and overheard a few words of the conversation next to me.  Two women were discussing 'Take Your Child to Work Day,' and how fun it was to pack a lunch for two and eat in the office.  I had to smile because it was so different from the lunches my sister and I shared with our father on those days.  My father is third generation lumber man, and so we grew up out of doors.  I think we stayed filthy as often as we stayed clean, and enjoyed every minute until we discovered it was considered 'work.'  We tromped through dense thickets of briars, slogged through marshy swamps, came home smelling of gasoline, machine oil and tree sap and covered in insect bites.  It was a great way to grow up.  It's why I became a librarian.  Anyway, every morning before we headed out, our father would give us the lecture: don't get around the machinery-they can't see/hear you and could easily accidentally slice you into deli meat, don't distract the workers and if a tree starts to fall, run like hell.  (Sorry for the language. And no, my father never swore in front of us, but that was the general idea, trust me; we could understand that even at that tender age.)  For lunch we would stop in the convenience store and get Lance crackers and a soda, drop the tailgate and feast.  It was glorious. 
My obssession with history began while listening to my father's stories of his father during the war, and his own experiences growing up during the tumultuous years after that horrendous event.  One story from my own childhood is one that only in the years succeeding has become amusing.  Growing up, I had nearly every orthodontic device contrived by man.  I once tripped the metal detector at the airport.  True story.  Anyway, one day, when I was in fourth grade, all of the bottom brackets of my braces, excluding the two on the molars, popped off, leaving the wire free.  It immediately hooked itself around the brackets on the top row of teeth, creating a synthetic form of lock-jaw.  Well, here's a pretty pickle.  I finally conveyed my emergency (in a non-vocal manner) to the teacher who immediately marched me to the front office and phoned my father.  What transpired afterwards, in the way of phone calls to the orthodontist I have no idea-my part in it picks up when my father actually arrived, in person, in the school's front office.  With a pair of newly acquired nail clippers soaking in alcohol.  I was instructed to lie down on the couch, like a shrink patient, which, trusting in my father's superior judgement, I did.  He then proceeded to do emergency orthodontic work in the head office, clipping the thin wire with the clippers and telling me to 'go back to class, we'd get more brackets put on tomorrow.'  Kid you not, you can't make this kind of stuff up, trust me.  Isn't it always nice to have inventive minds around to handle the unexpected?
There are hundreds of other stories about my dad I could share, but I suppose I'll wrap up by saying that Father's Day or any other day, I'll always love my Atticus dearly, no matter how old I get.