Story time with Miss Nicole

Going to story time at the library made me ask myself did my brother and I ever have the experience of going to a library with a family member to hear someone tell a story? I don't think I ever knew there was such a place as a public library. We did have a story time experience, but it was at home in Iowa on a Saturday morning. We would bring my mother a comic book and try to wake her up which was almost impossible. She went to college and worked and studied constantly. Saturday morning was her one day to get some sleep. What worked was making her a strong cup of instant coffee. I'm sure we made it triple strength because her hair would stand straight up and her eyes would pop open. We would sit on her bed trying not to gag as she read Superman or Batman and we would be glued to every word. We would then watch the Saturday morning shows that ended at noontime. Saturday morning was a trip to far off lands, to another time long ago when men wore big hats and rode horses and the hero would only get shot in the shoulder which we knew would only take a week to heal because the following Saturday he would be good as new.We had spaceships that looked like ice cream cones wrapped in tin foil that sped to the moon and beyond. Again the hero would only get wounded in the shoulder which we knew only took a week to heal. So is this 2013 world a better place with Miss Nicole and her high sweet voice reading a story about astronauts flying to the moon than my 1950's world? I looked at Samaya's face feeling the loss of gravity along with the other kids making the journey to another world on a space ship. I leaned against the back wall with Violet on my lap who was surprisingly well behaved outside of the earth's atmosphere. I breathed in particles of disintegrating words coated in wonder that floated down from rows of wooden shelves.Is the world a better place?--such cosmic questions giants ask each other on Mount Olympus. I am a small man who lives in Eliot--no mountains or giants in sight. Here on this little corner of earth,I can try to make their world a better place. My first official act will be teaching them how to make a decent cup of coffee.