This week, I covered a groundbreaking for a new library in Far North Fort Worth. This may not seem like something titillating enough to blog about (I know how much loyal Scaiaholics enjoy being titillated), but listen to me: libraries and I go way back.

My mom is a reference librarian back home in Ohio, and she got me a job working at the front desk one summer while I was in college to try to keep me from drinking. That didn’t work out, but to this day, I remember that the Dewey decimal number for non-fiction books about clowns is 792.

That, I’m sorry to say, really is true.

​The city manager got up during the groundbreaking and read from The Lorax. The Lorax! Fort Worth really is a city of innovation! When he said he picked a Dr. Seuss story, I assumed he’d read, “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” That seems like the fail safe when you’re telling kids all they can accomplish, but he had the GUTS to read The Lorax.

The groundbreaking had to be held inside because it was raining, so none of the ground was actually broken, but they had kids design shovels to represent their favorite books.

They came back with 12 shovels from books like, Where the Wild Things Are, the Harry Potter Series and, this kid got it, Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

The kids who designed the shovels were fourth graders at Bette Perot Elementary, making this adorable. Adorable except for the weirdly worldly kid who designed a Great Gatsby shovel. Or the fourth grader who painted a Lord of the Flies shovel.

I imagine that fourth grader is a real downer.

“Ah, what’s the point of recess?” he’ll ask, kicking at rocks with his hands in his pockets. “We’re all going to be dead in 100 years anyway. That library will be here long after I’m gone.”

​Upon hearing the city manager tell him The Lorax would be proud because people who live in that neighborhood kept working to get funding for the library and held meetings to talk about what they wanted, I imagine Lord of the Flies Shovel frowning and saying, “The Once-ler will never come back for me.”

If it were me, I’d have designed a shovel about what I read in fourth grade: nothing. Let’s none of us tell the Ft. Worth library director that, okay, internet?

But listen, kids, not reading gives you more time to devise excuses about why you’re not reading. That’ll come in handy when you’re in high school and get assigned Shakespeare sonnets. Or The Great Gatsby. Don’t go see the movie version of that, though. Even though it features Growing Pains star Leonardo DiCaprio, I thought it was too flashy. But maybe the book was flashy, too; I have no idea.

​I’m always happy to offer some practical advice to our nation’s future.