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Giving a new meaning to the "walk of shame," a student who was trapped overnight in O'Neill Library after getting lost in the stacks finally returned to his room yesterday morning. Jonathan Reading, A&S '10, said he entered the stacks looking for books on mystical unicorns for a research project and became disoriented when he could not find his way out among the PRs, PQs, and PAs.
After spending a total of 18 hours in the stacks, Reading was discovered by a student library assistant who said she heard whimpering sounds coming from one of the shelves. She found Reading curled up on a shelf, having moved the books out of the way so that he could lay on it, covered up in his jacket and some old newspapers.
"He looked so confused," said Mary Paige, the library assistant and CSOM '08, "like a 3-year old who has just gotten off a merry-go-round."
Reading said he went to the library right after he got out of class and, caught up in the excitement of researching mystical unicorns, forgot to grab a yellow map of the library at the information desk before going upstairs. He knew he was in trouble when he passed a sign for "PR" three times in a row, feeling sure he must have been walking in circles.
"What does 'PR' even stand for?" said Reading. "Whatever happened to the Dewey Decimal System? Anyone who can count knows how to use that!"
Reading's roommate did not report him missing until 2 a.m. He said it was not atypical that Reading would spend long periods of time in the library studying, although he did get a little worried when Reading failed to come back to the room to watch Star Trek on DVD, as was their weekly ritual on evenings of days ending in an odd number.
"I'm surprised he did not already know his way around the library well enough to navigate without a map," said the roommate. "But then again, he's no Captain Kirk."
"I usually don't leave the third floor," said Reading. "I thought I would get adventurous and explore this time. I guess I'm just not cut out for adventure and exploration."
Reading said the hardest part of his protracted stay in the stacks was staving off hunger. Always a follower of the rules, he had removed all the food from his backpack and left it behind the security guard's desk before entering the library. "I always carry a bag of Cheez-Its and some ketchup with me," he said. "It's the best - and it never goes bad."
When the hunger got too bad to stomach, Reading said he was wandering around when he miraculously stumbled upon the cookbook section. After pouring over glossy photographs of chicken and pasta dishes, he ripped out the pages and ate them. "It was nasty, but I just pretended I was eating the real thing, and then it wasn't really that bad. I had a chicken cordon bleu that might have actually been better than McElroy's," he said. "Although I did decide that the color photographs tasted worse than the black-and-white ones."
Besides the miracle of the cookbooks, Reading also counts as a blessing the fact that he was able to locate the restroom. "It could only have been divine intervention," he said. "I don't need to specify why."
After being led out of the library by Paige, who then called the Boston College Police Department (BCPD) to alert them that he had been found, Reading went straight to the vending machine in his residence hall to buy some Cheez-Its. "I already had some ketchup waiting for me in my room," he said. "Then I watched Star Trek, took a nap - I didn't sleep well last night - and dreamed about unicorns."
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