Funny Slapstick Comedy: Must-Have Laughter for Everyone
Title: Shelves and Shadows
Margaret, the library’s shiest librarian, was always happiest when surrounded by stacks of books—preferably where no one could see her. The dusty air was her cocoon, her haven of solitude. However, on that fateful Wednesday, fate had a different genre in mind: suspense.
It began with a thunderous crash. As Margaret reached for a particularly heavy tome titled “Advanced Dust Management,” the shelf gave a shudder and unleashed a barrage of hardcover horrors. Books flew like over-caffeinated birds, thumping against the floor with such conviction that it was almost musical—if you enjoyed dissonance.
Margaret dove into the chaos with a determined grunt, or what she hoped was a grunt, but it sounded more like a duck caught in a blender. With her knee skimming across the floor, she found herself rolling into a patch of spilled juice, left by an ill-timed snack break in the kids’ corner. Naturally, she lost her balance.
With the elegance of a hippo on ice, Margaret slipped, collided with the card catalog, and promptly toppled over like a set of dominoes. The system wasn’t meant for manual input but rather as an anchor for her dignity, which she would be reclaiming later in her self-reflection diary—assuming the pages weren’t stuck together with juice.
Suddenly, the doors burst open, revealing a sleek man in a suit that looked like it belonged to a superhero, if superheroes wore tailor-made blazers. He was panting and had an air of urgency that seemed almost contagious. He took one look at Margaret, knee-deep in book chaos, and an eyebrow arched so high it might as well have sprouted wings.
“Is this the quietest library in town?” he asked, barely containing his own astonishment.
Margaret, still regaining her senses and counting the number of slights against her self-esteem, blinked at him. “Depends. Do you want the best collection of long-forgotten world records or the juiciest drama involving ‘The Enigma of Shelving’?”
Ignoring her, the man hissed into an earpiece. “I’m in. It’s worse than I thought—there’s an infiltrator in here!”
The moment he uttered “infiltrator,” a series of men clad in dark suits descended upon the library like an out-of-control parade of angry squirrels. They looked around, guns drawn, completely missing the slightly flailing librarian caught mid-grab of an inflatable “World’s Greatest Librarian” trophy, which had rolled onto the floor after its daring escape from the display case.
What is happening? Am I being recruited for a high-stakes mission? Am I now a super-librarian? Can I add ‘heroic misfortune’ to my resume?
While she mentally drafted her cover letter to the Society of Extraordinary Library Professionals, a dramatic shootout erupted around her. Books exploded from the shelves as agents darted left and right. Margaret had become the world’s most ineffective obstacle, dodging agents while trying not to knock over a globe of the Earth. It wasn’t a mission for her—it was a full-blown circus.
Finally, as an agent slid past her, grabbing the nearest weapon (which happened to be the inflatable trophy she was clutching), the entire chaos seemed to halt. The suit on the ground snatched it up and yelled, “This is not a toy!”
“Good eye!” she retorted. “But I assure you, I’m not inflatable—just highly fragile!”
Just then, a helicopter descended onto the library lawn, swaying precariously as a gigantic searchlight beamed into the room, casting dramatic shadows and ensuring no one would ever check out “How to Hide From Helicopters in a Library.” The flurry of activity peaked, agents and confused patrons alike freezing to witness Margaret slip on the remains of her fruit juice escape route, knocking over the very statue of Dewey Decimal System itself.
With a twist and a lurch, she fell into a neatly arranged display of mystery novels. The clamor was surreal; Margaret suddenly became a human pinball, bouncing between hardcovers and soft covers alike, the literature all rallying behind her to keep the drama alive.
As she hit the wall, dust settling in a plume around her like an art installation, the crowd of agents gaped, collectively mouthing “who?”
And there, sprawled amongst the “hard-hitting fiction,” she took a moment to pause.
In the silence that followed, a disgruntled patron piped up, “Could you be any more dramatic?”
Margaret turned, looking the crowd dead in the eye and adjusted her librarian glasses—smudged from the whole affair. “If it’s any consolation, I was only trying to shelf my insecurities.”
Suddenly, her cell phone buzzed—a notification alert.
“Margaret? Your resume just hit the best-seller list!”
Turns out, there was no better story than her life in a library; perhaps it wasn’t just books that could topple over in suspense.