I left Franny and Strudel alone in the children’s section, reading happily, and walked a few feet over to the CD rack to see if I could find some reasonably non-offensive CDs to be played at bedtime again and AGAIN until they are spun into silvery dust.
There were two little girls sitting at the tables directly adjacent to the children’s CD racks. They were engaged in that eight-year-old girl psychological warfare that adults either miss, or choose not to notice.
“Your teeth are so YELLOW,” one girl hissed to her companion. “You should really brush them more often.”
“I DO brush them,” her friend retorted, in hushed tones.
“I mean, I have never seen such yellow, dirty-looking teeth as yours. Ugh.”
“They ARE NOT!”
This exchange went on for a few minutes until the girl with the teeth lost it and socked her little frenemy.
“OW,” the taunter said, at full volume. “You shouldn’t hit people.”
They remained unsupervised and I paused in my browsing, looking up at the sound of the taunter’s louder voice. She looked up at me, now visible, and the girl with the teeth slowly looked over her shoulder. They both waited to see what this adult would do. I looked at the girl with the teeth.
“I would have hit her, too,” I said, and went back to browsing.
This is exactly what I would have said. I’ve never understood why adults just ignore when this shit goes down.
Excellent.
Nicely done.
-tadpoledrain
The public library calls your name. The wage is not that great, but there are other satisfactions. Come on, man, you know you want it.
Nooo wai Jose. I admire my librarian friends, but the thought of doing it for a living gives me hives. I never even looked at going public in school…I was on the academic tip so I could write moar, hur hur hur.
SRSLY. I was all academical for years, until I found out I could work part time, pick my kids up from school 4 days out of five, and still make 25 bucks an hour. And insult mean little girls on the Q.T. And not have to deal with COLLEGE STUDENTS, who are the stupidest most arrogant beasts on the planet.
BUT. My sister in law is a librarian (a TAXONOMIST, she is called, apparently “librarian” is too girly for her company, i.e. “What IS metadata, anyway?” “It’s cataloging – for men”) out where you are for a company whose only contract is Microsoft. No public contact at all.
Either way, good luck!
I actually enjoyed “librarianing” for a teaching hospital for years. The plus is few, or no, irritating co-workers. The minus is, if a medical librarian, you help 60+ people who think they are God but who can’t figure out that 701.32 comes before 784.05 on the shelves.
(Those two numbers have no significance, as far as I know, to anything in specific, but you get the idea.)