At the public high school I attended, checking a book out of the school library involved signing it out on the pasted book card inside the back cover. I used that library a lot, to the point where I was friends with the school librarian. Once, I carried a book to the front and she opened the back cover and exclaimed, “but you already checked this one out.” I looked down to see what seemed to be my own autograph.
Then we noticed the date beside it. The last person to check it out had been my dad, twenty-five years before. We don’t have the same first name, but our signatures were the same illegible scrawl.
I never did, of course, but I could have signed off on my own report cards.
Pam Troy 