Pride Goeth Before a Fall

Or, to be more accurate, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before the fall" (proverbs 16:18).  I know this from the internet, not from any personal bible study, as by and large I am a good old-fashioned heathen, which is to say that I am successfully not forcibly converted by any major religion.

Anyway, the point is that we have a new library, and it is large and pretty and a nice place to sit and work, although all the chairs near electrical outlets are uncomfortable as hell.  And for the life of me, I can't figure out how this library is organized.  The Dewey decimal system is a wonderful thing, but when you can't find an entire genre of books (say, for example, the mysteries are suspiciously and delightfully ironically missing) the reference number isn't going to do you much good.

This library is a two-story building, so I spent a lot of time going up and down the stairs in search of the book I wanted, as it never seemed to be on the floor I was on at the time.  Unfortunately, the stairs are that type of almost purposefully unkind proportions, where they are a little bit too deep and the risers are a little bit too short and it makes climbing them a very awkward process that requires almost too much concentration.

Now all of this would be a moot point if I had just asked the nice women at the information desk for help, because they could have told me that the mysteries were upstairs behind the tall magazine racks that I thought went on forever.  But pride, or at least embarrassment at not being able to figure this out on my own, kept me from asking.  So my visit to the library was easily four times the length it should have been, and by the time I found the book in question I was both annoyed and relieved and the combination was enough to keep me from concentrating properly on the stairs.

So I fell.  After two steps, I misjudged the distance in the whole depth-to-height ratio and got that jarring feeling when you expect the ground to be a little bit farther away than it actually is, and my other foot failed to find the next step at all.  Down I slid, my years of experience in falling allowing me to avoid going ass-over-teakettle by just leaning back and riding the stairs like an incredibly painful and jagged slide.  Thankfully, at the half-way point there was a small landing and I managed to catch my feet under me and stand up again, taking the second half of the stairs nonchalantly, trying to play it cool and hoping no one had noticed.

Pretty much everyone had noticed.

I walked red-faced to the front desk and, to add insult to injury, discovered I had no cash to pay off a fine from many many years ago that prohibited me from actually checking out the book I had gone through so much trouble to find.  

I haven't been back yet.