I am very proud -- smug, even -- to report that I am the very first person in the whole state of Colorado to own the soon-to-be-famous "Librarian Action Figure." I got it on Monday, Sept. 28, two days before its general release.

Even better, I got it, autographed, from Nancy Pearl herself, the Seattle librarian upon whom the action figure was modeled.

It's a beaut. I'm especially taken with its "amazing push-button shushing action plus BONUS Trading Card and Bookmark."

All of us have done it. All of us have had it done TO us.

I'm talking about ratings.

The boys in my undergraduate dorm laughed at their ratings of the coeds in the cafeteria line -- placards held high with the numbers.

Those same boys cringed when the coeds rated THEM that evening at dinner. The women added ... comments. (Which just goes to show you, said the boys, how cruel and unfair women can be.)

It takes a while in life to learn important lessons. Here's one of them: Rate not, lest ye be rated.

When I was a kid, I used to go to a bookmobile.There I found a book called, "Me and Caleb."

I don't remember anymore what it was about (other than Caleb, which I thought then, and still think, is a cool name). But I do remember this. I loved that book, and two weeks later, I asked Mrs. Johnson, the twinkly-eyed bookmobile librarian, to let me renew it.

October 2, 2002, was a day rich in irony.

On the one hand, according to the Denver Post, the Denver Public Library was, once again, awarded first place in the Hennen's American Public Library Ratings. Hennen, a Wisconsin librarian, used 2000 data to rate public libraries in 15 categories, including circulation, staffing, materials and funding levels.

The index has a theoretical minimum of 1 and a maximum of 1,000. Denver's score was 893. Hurray for DPL, which has now won the "top rating" twice in a row.