Musings of a quilting librarian Grandma.
Name:
Location: United States

Links

Archives

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Rotton kids after school

Our library is lucky enough to be across the street from an elementary school and from the bus stop for 2 busloads of kids from the middle and high schools. So every day at 2:45 about 15-20 elem kids come over and hop on the computers and fill up the tables and act like kids. They are really OK. But right at 4, the busloads of big kids arrive and all hell breaks loose. They arrive en mass and the noise level goes through the roof, and they all have to hug each other, and annoy the little kids and cuss and in general drive us crazy. Of course all the staff is busy with customers, and doesn't have time to deal with all the noise.

Yesterday, at 4, the noise was high, and a mother came up to me at the desk and said "Somebody needs to DO something. blah blah pepper spray, blah blah". What? Pepper Spray? in the Library? I finished helping the customer and went out to the tiny lobby, where there was a gang of about 20 kids. I finally saw the boy bent over at the drinking fountain, washing out his eyess. It turns out that one of the kids from the bus sprayed pepper spray in the air, not meaning to hurt anyone, of course, and it got into the kid's eyes. It happened in the parking lot of another business, but of course the place to wash out your eyes is the public library, so they all trouped in here. I finally got the boy to go into the restroom to wash his eyes, and disbursed the crowd, and reassured the voting staff, since the library is a polling place and it was election day.
Quiet library, Hah!