What Are the Chances?

From time to time we donate Kristin’s books. Usually we donate to various homeschool groups having meet ups, conventions and other gatherings, mainly as way to promote the books and offer coupons.

Recently we decided to donate some geography sets to three local libraries here in the Prescott, Arizona area. Just a small way for us to give back to our community and hopefully get these books into some homeschoolers’ hands who might not ordinarily be able to get them.

Now I’ve never donated books to a library. I just kind of expected to donate the books and they would go directly into the library collection. Silly me.

I arrived at the library with a stack of books, placed them on the desk of the receptionist and let her know the name of the person I had contacted. I explained what the books were about and was ready to leave when she said,

“If we don’t put them in our collection will it be okay to donate them to Friends of the Library?” I’m thinking, how many friends does the library have? Turns out books donated to “Friends of the Library” get sold to raise money for the library, a worthy cause for sure.

But still, I wasn’t very excited about that. These aren’t used books, they’re brand new ones and our whole intent, as I said, was to try to get these books to homeschoolers. We used the library quite a bit when we were homeschooling our son. It can save a lot of money to find the books you need there.

So I hemmed and hawed a bit. Clearly I wanted our books in the collection, but, you know, I didn’t want to come across as the arrogant husband of the author, even if I am the arrogant husband of the author. So I said, “Well, okay, but I’d really prefer they go into the collection.”

While we were talking a woman and her two children walked up behind me. She, apparently, had overheard the conversation or had seen the books sitting on the desk and said:

“I just requested that the library buy these books. I saw them on Amazon. They look really cool. We’re homeschoolers.”

She walked away. I looked at the receptionist. She looked at me. Then she said, “I think these will probably go into the collection.”

And sure enough, they did.