The world was mine for the reading, A 5 minute freewrite

I was born over a second-hand bookshop, which was managed by my parents and included accommodation in the flat overhead. I remember my father telling me that within the covers of the books lay all the knowledge of the world, and since I had so many questions, I was eager to read them all.

My father would buy books from houses all over the city, and my job was to shelve them as Mills and Boon, Romantic fiction, War, Westerns, Science fiction, Thrillers, Horror, Children’s and Detectives. Opening each box was like entering a wonderland where I never knew what treasures I would find.

Unfortunately, this love affair came to an abrupt halt when the traffic flow on the road outside was reversed, and the bus stop moved to the opposite side of the street eliminating the passing trade and closing us down. When we moved house, however, I soon discovered the joys of the public library and spent many happy hours sitting on the footstool between the shelves devouring as much as I could in case it was taken away.

It was the day I joined the library that I first realised that women were somehow inferior to men. But that's another story.

When we moved to yet another part of the city there was no public library, however, I was a frequent visitor to the school library, which, though closed to students without a teacher's written permission, was the place to which the principal summoned errant pupils to receive corporal punishment for their transgressions.

Posted in response to @mariannewest's 5-minute freewrite

The prompt is Library and the image is my own