Bells of Bigotry
Here's a confession. I don't have internet access at home. I'm online all the time in other places, butI'm just too damn frum to have it in the house (Nyah, Nyah, Nyah!).
One place I frequently work is the library. I don't know what your local library is like, how they enforce the rules, but I hope for your sake it's not like mine.
In my library, a major method of enforcement is the hollering Lunatic Librarian Lady. She's a middle aged woman with broken glasses, who has absolutely no clue how to modulate the tone of her voice. She just yells everything. When I'm down and out, I cheer up by trying to envision her screaming sweet nothings in her lover's ear.
If your cellphone so much as whimpers in the library, she will holler so that ALL of the people on the computers, and the fiction section, and the diner next door can hear, saying "EXCUSE ME SIR, WE DON'T ALLOW CELLPHONE USE IN THE LIBRARY!" And you, abashed and blushing, will long since have turned off your cellphone. But that doesn't stop Hollering Lunatic Library Lady. She continues to disturb all the library patrons. "IT DISTURBS OTHER PATRONS OF THE LIBRARY WHEN YOUR PHONE RINGS!" she condescendingly continues, "PLEASE BE CONSIDERATE, AND TALK OUTSIDE!"
Another enforcer whom I hope you never meet is the fat obnoxious security guard. He's there when the library opens in the morning, and hogs the "Daily News"for the rest of the day. Every now and then, he hoists his bulk out of his chair and bellows at a random person engaged in a random misdemeanor, like quietly showing the guy at the next computer how to use a mouse.
I'm always tempted to drop a feedback slip in the suggestion box, but I don't want to be responsible for someone losing their livlihood. Also, another problem at my library is feedback slips. They never have them.
What these heroic pursuers of justice never do, is enforce anything worthwhile.
Each afternoon, after school lets out, the library is filled with tweens and adolescents of various minority groups. (I'm probably bigoted still, since I specified, but I'm working on it.) They sit and message each other from one computer to another in the library.
Honestly, but for the vulgarity and utter disregard for rules, I don't think I'd have anything against them. But these kids behave exactly the way you'd expect gutter kids to behave when nobody's watching them. Several times, an extra daring kid even made comments about the wonderfulness of Hitler for my listening pleasure. So while I struggle to remain unobtrusive as I teach the guy next to me how to use Google, the conversation around me goes something like this:
Kid A (sitting at computer 6): Hey Shauntay!
Kid B (sitting at computer 11): (Doesn't hear)
Kid A: (louder, so Kid B will hear) YO SHAUNTAY! YOU GET MY MESSAGE?
Kid B: Shit! I don' see no message!
Kid A: Ah sent you a message!
Kid B:I di-int get no fuckin message! (scrambles over to computer 6) Lemme see dat!
Kid A: It say dat Carlos say Latisha you girlfriend!
Kid C (on computer 2 with four friends): Latisha whose girlfriend?
Kid B: Fuck dat shit. Ah aint got no girlfriend!
Kid A: A di-int fuckin say dat Latisha you girlfriend. Ah say dat CARLOS say Latisha you girlfriend!
Kid B: Fuck. (scrambles back to computer 11) I'ma send YOU a message!
Hollering Lunatic Library Lady: (pointing to me) EXCUSE ME SIR! YOU HAVE TO STAY ON THE COMPUTER YOU WERE ASSIGNED TO! OTHERWISE YOU"LL LOSE YOUR TURN!
Five kids on computer 2: (snickering and pointing)
"This is what happens," I think, "When your culture makes no demands of anybody, when bitches and hos be your career aspiration (Latisha) or most desired possession (her various boyfriends)."
Now that summer is here, I see these kids even if I'm there in the morning. Today, I saw some of them again. They turned on the volume on their computers, a big library no-no, and compared songs they knew, sometimes singing along. I was thrilled when their Momma came to pick them up, because it finally got quiet enough to read the news.
When I walked out of the library a while later, there was a posse of police cars sprawled through the parking lot. The kids were standing around, just staring, and Momma was being put in handcuffs.
One eight year old kid was a little daring. "Asshole!" he yelled at the policeman making the arrest.
Momma gave instructions to the older girl. "You call Timmy and tell him where I'm at. He'll bail Ma out quick."
"Fuck dat shit," The girl murmured, listening. "Fuck dat shit."
While several of the kids were trying to display bravado, one girl just turned to wipe her eyes.
They ushered Momma into the car.
And I thought "There, but for the grace of God, goes my mother."
Send not to know,
For whom the bell tolls
It Fucking tolls for thee.
posted by renaissanceman @ 3:26 PM
6 Comments:
HA! It's exactly the same at my library. Thank the good lord (and my dad too) that I have high speed internet access at home...
Another gritty post...keep 'em coming.
You have a marvelous writing gift.
Not like my library. There is no sound on the computers there. There is almost always a free computer and the librarians are nice and helpful. If you are looking to move for the sake of a better library let me know. How to let me know you may ask? By posting another funny post here about it and I'll be sure to contact you. Hint. My ph # ends in 4652.
Good post.
Keep it coming - a good blog needs at least one post a day.
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Well bully to all those liberal MO/Conservedox jews complaining and decrying the Rabbinic ban on the internet encroaching on the right to free speech and access to other cultures. While you and other yeshiva people walk into your local public library and interact with other minority groups on a regular basis they sit at home in their Long Island/New Jersey suburban houses or Upper East Side Townhouses with their high speed internet access and never once venture out of their self-contained Jewish ghettos. How will they ever be able to adequately feel the pain and suffering of minority communities, let alone understand their concerns and frustrations, if they never have the opportunity to see a mother getting arrested in front of her children or have social intercourse with the teenagers in their own language? I personally applaud the various Roshei Yeshiva who have signed onto the "cheirim" and presume that they did so in order to increase the social awareness amongst their talmidim of the many different viewpoints and cultures that exist around us. True the Roshei Yeshivot did it under a guise of zealotry, but therein lies their sheer brilliance. They’ve realized that people from within their community would be loath to avail themselves of opportunities to interact with minority groups, but once it was put under the guise of being "frum" they would run to their local libraries with "zreizus."
What utter brilliance, those Rabbis have a real innate understanding of human nature...
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