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Guest opinion: The riddle of the reference robber

By Anneli Byrd - Special to the Standard-Examiner | Jun 3, 2022

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Anneli Byrd

I’m at the point in my life where I am beginning to accept the idea that there are some dreams that are simply not going to come true for me. I’m never going to climb Mount Everest or be a champion ice skater or be a beauty queen. This is sad. But most devastating of all is that I’m never going to be Nancy Drew.

In my more delusional moments, I can honestly believe that I’m just like Nancy, forever young, slim and attractive and blessed with every talent. I also know exactly the right thing to say in any and all situations, I always have as much time as I want to do whatever I want, all men are fascinated by me, my car always works and I eat chocolate cake at midnight with no negative consequences ever. My powers for delusional thinking are very strong and get me into trouble when I act on the chocolate cake part of my fantasies.

But the main thing that separates me from Nancy (besides having nothing in common whatsoever) is the lack of mystery in my life. Nobody’s ever asked me to find a lost family heirloom and I’ve never been at the right place or time to solve a crime that has the police baffled, except for one time. A real honest to goodness mystery came my way and I blew it!

I was working at a small branch library in Houston and our reference books began disappearing. This was serious. Those collections are very expensive. I was ecstatic. In my mind, I called it “The Riddle of the Reference Robber” and I was going to solve it!

Except that I didn’t. I tried, but I didn’t even find so much as a scrap of paper with half of the thief’s name. Still, I knew that Nancy would go straight to the chief of police to tell him all about the library and who had the biggest fines, but then I remembered that I didn’t actually know the chief of police and that my dad wasn’t a lawyer who could bail me out if I got into trouble. Instead, I hung around after hours hoping to be knocked out by a falling bookcase or kidnapped (thus uncovering some important clues), but no luck.

Nancy also solves mysteries by stumbling (literally) into things, getting hurt and causing lots of damage. Nobody is ever annoyed about this because she’ll have caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure wearing a distinctive red scarf. Just as I was wondering if I could get a helpful injury by ramming a book truck into the stacks, I got a paper cut.

“Ouch!” I said.

“What happened?” said my supervisor.

“I got a paper cut!” I said, sucking my finger.

“Oh no! You didn’t get any blood on that book, I hope!” she said, examining the book with concern.

I thought better of the crashed book truck idea.

In the end, the police caught the person responsible. I don’t know how. They didn’t have the basic courtesy to keep me informed of their progress. I had to settle for second-hand news from my boss. Talk about a Nancy Drew criminal! The thief was a man who was trying to start his own university and needed reference books to stock his college library (he was by no means our weirdest patron, which may explain why we didn’t spot him right away).

It’s unlikely that I’ll ever have such a golden opportunity again. But should you misplace your emerald brooch, please call me! I’ll come straight over to investigate. If you fix me chocolate cake, I promise to find the secret room hidden behind your bookcase. If I don’t, at least we’ll still have the cake.

Anneli Byrd is an academic adviser in Weber State University’s Student Success Center.

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