Paperback People

It’s 1998 at the Orillia Public Library. 

That smell; the electrified dust and oxygen as we pass through the first set of doors to the long empty hall with the downward-sloping wheelchair ramp, maybe the longest in Ontario, and we inhale the particles: old bookish tones with a touch of road salt and boot rubber embedded in a damp worn-out carpet. 

This is the first leg of our pilgrimage. 

Savouring the magic in the way only children can, we squeak our hands across the sticky railing, running down, down, down, and our winter boots go thump, thump, thump and the light of early morning casts our shapes against the white block wall like Peter Pan’s shadow.

Our excitement grows as we approach the second set of doors, stopping briefly to rifle through the cardboard box filled with unwanted books.

FREE.

Hurry up, Mom.

Then we drag open the heavy doors and enter the inner chambers, past the bathrooms and the receptionist's desk with all of the little posters of upcoming events, down to the right, deeper, down into the children’s section with the giant stuffed snake that the little kids sit on during storytime as the lady reads out loud from picture books. 

This is where I learn the difference between fiction and non-fiction; those two laminated constructs stuck with sticky tack to the ends of the faux wooden bookshelves. 

The categories confuse me. 

I look up at my teacher, my mother, with my curious homeschooled eyes and ask, “Non-fiction is real, and fiction is made-up, right?” 

My mom confirms my answer, and I wonder aloud why it isn’t the other way around. 

Wouldn’t it be easier to keep things straight?

Fiction is Real. 

Non-Fiction is Not-Real. 

Easy.

At home on the couch watching a movie with my dad, I ask “is this based on a true story?”

He looks at me with one raised eyebrow, chin tilted down. 

“It’s based on a story.”

*

Now I’m tall and old and bald, and that library has been replaced from the ground up. No more stretching, sloped ramps. 

My kids run down new hallways ahead of me. 

What is the difference between Kim Jung Il and Saruman? 

Dark forces are dark forces, and the sharp teeth of fiction sink deeper than the blurry picture of a prince who lived in a faraway land. 

I don’t know Kanye West the way I know Aslan, Robinson Crusoe, Walter White, or Ragnor Lothbrok. I know Jack from the Shining more intimately than I know his creator, Stephen King.

I’ve met face-to-face with hundreds of real people who have sunk into my past, forgotten and unreal to me—and despite an egotistical notion that I’m special, that I’m the main character, I’ve dissolved into theirs. 

Meanwhile, the fictional characters I’ve met continue to check in and out of the motel of my mind. Some behave like friends, helping me to see the good in life; to trust the good in myself. Others haunt me with their disturbing thoughts and behaviours— thoughts and behaviours I see in the mirror, smaller and less dramatic, but not entirely benign. 

Heroes and villains fight for my attention and loyalty. 

These fictional experiences live together in my imagination with the fragments of every non-fiction story I’ve read. Stories about psychopathic killers, manmade desserts, and victims surviving attempted murder and plane crashes and boat wrecks. 

The pain and suffering of real people in the real world is not the same as the pain and suffering of hobbits in the Shire. We are not in the Upside Down. 

Reality is not a special effect. 

And yet, the real people I read about transform into characters, moving through my imagination like living roommates with the paperback people of fiction. Together, they tell me stories; stories about the world, about Good and Evil, about life and death, about human nature. 

They tell me stories about myself. 

Then there are the myths and legends, the little black-and-white stories of the olden days, unverifiable snapshots and documentaries, and confusing biblical accounts— all of these images and sounds and feelings that kids latch on to and then share like it’s the gospel truth. Did you know if you swallow gum it’ll stay in your stomach for seven years?

These stories, like a million trees planted a million years ago become the forest of my imagination, rich and changing, dying and giving birth to new life again and again as leaves and seeds and the ancient trees fall on beds of composted soil and then grow anew with each new telling.