Just Around The Corner

There’s a giant free home entertainment center waiting for your family to claim ownership.

Well, that may be a slight exaggeration because you and your kids only get to take hold of it as a loan.

But there shouldn’t be any complaints here, because the loan comes with a renewal process that’s as simple and as uncomplicated as the original transaction.

This is an individualized entertainment center created and developed with age, interest and comprehension levels built into the operating system.

And whereforth might this mighty piece of family technology be found?

You won’t find it at Best Buy, Radio Shack or Fry’s.

For decades in most urban communities, our public libraries, the free entertainment centers, have been located within walking distance from the places we call home.

You name it, they’ve got it.  Books in the library, long before Google, were there to answer our questions and stimulate and satisfy our intellectual curiousity.

A pre-schooler who wants a pet – who, of course, has no idea of the care and responsibility involved – needs to visit the neighborhood entertainment center.

The ten-year-old who is becoming the household chef will find recipes from around the world located in the “stacks” as the sections are called.

No argument here as to who gets to watch the Animal Channel vs the Cooking Channel, because at the neighborhood entertainment center all channels are available all of the time.

Moms are not left out, either.  Those love dramas she used to watch on television every day – before she got a job – are at her local library,bound and classified as romance novels.

Include Dad in the neighborhood family outing.  Sports!  Everything he ever wanted to know, thought he knew or has forgotten is there to be checked out.

Ah, the check-out is where the process and simple transaction mentioned earlier comes into play.

For the readers of my blog, you know about the process, so think of this as a blog to print and hand out to the people down the street from you or give it to folks waiting at the bus stop.

A simple application is filled out at the library front desk.  No credit check is done and there’s no box to mark as to whether you’ve ever been incarcerated.

All family members five years and older quality for the home entertainment center‘s lending policy.

Libraries offer considerably more than books for check-out – movies and music are there to satisfy just about everyone’s taste.

Story time for the little ones.  Lectures for the adults.  Games and a calendar full of activities are provided free of charge and it’s all just around a few corners from where you live.

So now that you’ve been given this information, just when you were thinking there’s no hope for the good life in this rotten economy, that neighbor up the street gave you this.

Just when you were thinking how very weary you are of trying to provide some kind of entertainment for the kids, you’ve  discovered more at the bus stop than lots of trash under the bench.

So what you gonna do now?