Riot Rule #4: “Always be learning.”

Mel has a picture frame on one of the walls in her apartment, with a number of inspirational, motivational, and humorous quotations that she selected and arranged herself. One of my favorites is, “The best reason: we might learn something.”

In planning the activities for our summer reading program, I decided that it would be a good idea to have some caterpillars, feed them a bunch of milkweed leaves, let them spin their cocoons, and then watch them turn into butterflies. It’s a cute idea, and it all goes along nicely with both the children’s theme (”Catch the Reading Bug”) and the teens’ theme (”Metamorphosis @ Your Library”), so the whole program has something for everyone. Things started out relatively well, with the arrival of six caterpillars, six milkweed plants, and three terrarium-style “cages” for the critters to call home. A librarian from our Events and Outreach department even personally delivered all the required goods.

And then, one caterpillar died. Then another. And another.

And then people became attached to the remaining caterpillars. Members of the staff even gave them names.

Then two more died; so long, Princess Mia and Soda Pop.

Which leaves us, sadly, with one single caterpillar.

So now Dylan the Caterpillar has been moved from her original home in the staff break room to the Help Desk, where patrons and staff alike can watch her gnawing away at milkweed and apparently having a good time. Or at least as good a time as a caterpillar can have.

With five caterpillar deaths on my hands, do I consider this program a success? Maybe not in the conventional sense. But if nothing else, it’s been a learning experience. Even if I didn’t successfully raise all my caterpillars to butterfly maturity (and believe me, as the “caterpillar killer,” I had some crazy guilt-drenched nightmares), I still learned that I should be more cautious about any library programs that, say, involve living things.

In the meantime, I’ve seen a few parents lift their small children in their arms so that the kids can get a better look at Dylan and her little caterpillar life. So even if Dylan is the last of her kind, at least the program hasn’t been a total bust so far.

The point is, if I can walk away from this knowing that I shouldn’t have done something or that I should have done something differently, then all things considered, I’ve garnered some kind of professional and personal gain. Even when we make mistakes, we can’t beat ourselves up too badly as long as we learn from them.

On a somewhat related note, keep in mind the 80s-movie wisdom at the end of Say Anything, when Diane Court turns to Lloyd Dobler and says, “Nobody thinks it will work, do they?” and Lloyd, without missing a beat, responds, “No. You just described every great success story.”