Staple of a Media Diet

Media matters. It shapes our perspective on places and people. Gives us information on topics that might have been forgotten. Stories and music and culture bleed through the spurting noise that humans make everyday to try and communicate with the past, present, and future. People want to be noticed, so they create.

     Some people want the present to be shaped to their liking. They do not create. They simply exist and destroy. They are parasites to the culture at large reaping all the bounty and providing none. Parasites kill the host by leeching all the resources. In the end they die as well.

     The moment art is removed from the discourse the whole of humanity suffers. Humans are creatures of discourse. The loss of one person's ability to share their experience and partake in the human condition of communication causes all humanity's scream into the void that much quieter.

     That being said, don't say "fuck" in the library to Brenda.

     "Sir, I will not be talked to like that," Brenda said to the blonde man in a dirty brown tshirt. The circulation librarian stood behind her desk with a barcode scanner in one hand and a stapler in the other. With a small motion of her pinky the stapler unhinged and flopped open. She set the scanner in its cradle.

     "I don't give a fuck what you-" was all the guy got to say before a stapler smacked him in the side of the head. A small metal line stood out on his cheek. 

     Brenda hefted the stapler by the bottom part and said, "Keep talking and I'll staple the other side shut."

     The man lunged at Brenda. She stepped back and let him drape himself across the circulation desk. Down came the stapler again, over and over. He would have a hard time getting his t-shirt off tonight. Brenda grabbed a handful of the man's greasy blonde hair. Her knee slammed into his face twice before he stopped moving.

     "Anybody here with this gentleman?" Brenda said to the quiet patrons of the library.

     One man raised his hand. He had the same dirty blonde hair and the same stains on his tshirt. He sat at one of the tables with a small pouch of tobacco in front of him and some rolling papers.

     Brenda said, "Well, come'on. Get him and y'all get out."

     Tobacco said, "But I was almost done."

     Brenda shoved the body off the desk. "Yall are done."

     Tobacco mumbled a "yes ma'am" and gathered his cigarette rolling materials. He got his friend on his feet, and the two of them left the building.

     She told me about it later when we were going over the plans for the winter reading program. I asked if she had thought about teaching self defense.

     "I don't defend myself. I end confrontations," she said.

     I wondered if we could maybe do a confrontation ending demonstration at the next state library conference.