When I went back to school and started trying to find quiet places to
study, my suspicions were confirmed: There is no quiet place on earth.

My first attempt to find a quiet spot was in the university library
on the silent study floor. I spread my books and coat out over a
whole unclaimed table to discourage squatters and left to collect the
books I needed. When I returned, two students wearing blue scrubs had
moved my notebooks and were sitting at the table looking for articles in medical journals. One flipped noisily through the volume in front of her, dragging an index finger (her own presumably, but I don’t trust anyone who spends so much time with cadavers) down a column of text saying, “pulmonary . . . pulmonary . . . pulmonary.”

Her companion was a few feet away in the stacks calling out “Did you
find anything?”

She called back, “Not yet. How about you?”

“Maybe,” he called, “Come look at this one.”

“Right now?” she asked.

This is when I discovered the depths of my own cowardice. What would
Dixie Carter do in a situation like this? Deliver a withering
monologue about otherwise bright people who are unfortunately unable
to read the very large signs that said SILENT STUDY FLOOR in six-inch
letters? Not me. I smiled at the students who would one
day keep people waiting interminably in paper gowns and made three
trips carrying my books to a new table.

Public libraries were no better. I love that libraries are
active, busy places that aren’t necessarily silent. But I would
expect other adults to remember that libraries are places where
folks might expect enough quiet to do a little thinking.

At my area library, I chose a table where no one else was sitting,
far from the giggling teenaged couple tickle-fighting on the couch
and nowhere near the children’s room. I spread out my belongings
to claim space, and watched, wimpy and amazed, as a woman pushed my
coat aside and chose my table over all the other unoccupied ones,
sighed heavily and took her cellular phone out of her purse.

She made a call, talking at full volume about a grant she was
researching. Then she stood up and walked to the shelves to look for
more books, her rubber thong sandals slapping against her feet with
every step. After several trips to and from the stacks, sandals
slapping, with the phone conversation continuing throughout, a
library employee approached. Maybe the librarian was going to ask her
to keep it down, I thought. I watched over the top of my notebook.

Instead the two women discussed the grant research at great length
beside me as I tried not to look as though I were about to scream.
And again, I smiled a weak little smile, stacked up my books, and
moved on.

At home, a locked bathroom door worked for a little while, but real
studying requires upholstery. Eventually I learned that sitting in my
car in parking lots was my best bet. I could park at the far end of
the grocery store parking lot, lock all the car doors and have the
quiet I needed to study.

Once as I sat in my car in the parking lot of a public park, trying
to decipher post-deconstructionist French feminist literature, a pair
of deer dashed past, looking for a place where they could read
quietly, I’m sure. I yelled after them, “Good luck! You might try
sitting outside Food Lion!”