Thursday, December 08, 2005

Teenaged Angst BS

One of my favorite "noir" movies of all teenaged time has to be "Heathers." In it Winona Ryder's character scribbles furiously in her diary (while wearing a monocle, how cool is that?) about her teenaged angst bs having a body count.

Was that when it started? The whole kid-as-violent-entity-of-society?

What was that song..."Only a Lad?" By Oingo Boingo? "Society made him what he is....we hope he'll go away, he'll go away-ay?" I suppose that added to the teenager-as-not-Beaver-Cleaver anymore...

Why am I dwelling on this? Well, yesterday I had a kid (and I just stopped myself from writing "punk") who came in and jumped ahead of the SEVEN people waiting for an internet terminal. I had no knowledge of this until I checked the computer out to one of my darling little trouble-making girls. Five minutes later she comes up and says,
"'scuse me, the guy is still on B." "The guy?" I thought, but he'd given me his card. "No one should be on B right now, I JUST checked it out to you." She shrugged her shoulders in that "The bandits, they are invading the village" kind of way so I called out (you can't see computer B from the desk), "Whoever's on computer B, you need to check out that computer first, and there's a LONG line ahead of you." My girl smiled and walked back there. 15 minutes later her friend comes up with the card. "The guy is still on, my friend told him something and he said something back and she left."


Am I really that protective?
I suppose I am.
I went back to computer B and a teenaged boy was typing away.
"Excuse me, it says right on the computer you have to check it out at the desk."
Not once taking his eyes from the screen, "Yeah, I'm almost done."
I walked over to the mouse and said, "No, you're done now."
"NO, you can at least hit send!"
"No, I can't."

And that apparently gave him license to blow up at me. I thought I might get hurt even. But no, his teenaged angst BS did not have a body count...yet. He stormed out of the library and slammed the door behind him. All was quiet. I turned to one of the girls and smiled. "All yours."

Can we say NO ONE stayed over their allotted computer time yesterday?

So now I've made an enemy. Maybe. I really can't tell. This last summer I had my very own homeless stalker. But "French guy" as we called him, limped. I could outrun him if need be. (He's moved back to Reno as it SNOWS here and being homeless in the snow is no good.) This kid though, I dunno. When we were kids did we blow up at librarians (or lowly library pages?), teachers, people in authority? I mean, maybe we wished we did, but I know my friends and I were pretty mellow-yellow about the whole thing. And here I grew up watching "The Breakfast Club" and all manner of "bad boy in the group" movies from the John Hughes crowd. I know I CHEERED for the "bad boy" a whole lot, but to act like them? Well, #1 I'm female, makes it hard to be the "bad boy." But #2 I was taught to respect my elders just a little too well...maybe? Of course I blew up at my parents, but they're my parents, right? But complete strangers? Part of the joys of working in public service?

Speaking of which, must get on the road to go do that.
Here's hoping we all have a nice peaceful non-violent filled day.

1 comment:

Jillio said...

some kids NEED a good slap upside the head.
i can't stand punk kids. like they got nothing better to do than b**** out the world for getting in their way.
regulate without fear of retribution. if the kid wants to be ignorant of the policies, then he relinquishes rights to the privileges available to him. payback's a b****, so if the kid doesn't shape up, it'll come back to him eventually.