Here’s what happened: Denny and I had checked out the complete second season of Coupling, my new favorite show. It was a two-disc set. The first disc was so badly scratched that quite a few parts of it were completely unwatchable, skipping and freezing and such. We stumbled through it, and when it was time to get to the second disc, I noticed that it was in just as bad or worse of shape than the first one. In an attempt to remedy the situation, I wiped it on my pants.

SNAP. The disc cracked. It must have been really weakened, because I didn’t wipe it very hard.

I got nervous. I didn’t feel like I should have to replace the whole disc, since it was 90% crappy before I rendered it completely unusable. I asked my friend Jamal for advice, since he is a former library employee. He recommended that I stick it together with superglue and feign ignorance.

I wasn’t very comfortable with that idea, because I’d have to live in fear every time I entered the library. Besides, if it happened to go undetected, I didn’t want to be the source of the next person’s disappointment when the disc was worthless. I felt very conflicted about the whole thing. You see, I love the library and I don’t want to do it harm. And yet, I’ve got a lot of expenses coming up, and I don’t want to pay for something that’s only partly my fault.

So what I did was I went to the library, found the friendliest-looking employee that I could, and described my situation much as I did above. I took responsibility for my part in the destruction while making sure she understood that it sucked previous to my involvement.

And…dig this! She said I don’t have to pay for it! And I don’t have to live in fear! All she asked was that I promise never to clean a DVD on my pants again. Fair enough. I am feeling very relieved.