God bless the Middle Schoolers

If only 11 and 12 year old girls didn't grow up to become 15 and 16 year old girls. At 12, they still like me, and can actually be quite agreeable at times. I had some girls participating in my after-school craft (bead creatures) in the teen area today, and after I called one of them a rebel, she laughed, and then asked "what's a rebel?". Another one told me I was funny (which I took as a compliment even if it wasn't), and then I attempted to explain what Buddhism was to three girls who have never heard of any other religion than Christianity. Yeah, so this month we have this monk guy at the library from Tibet - no, that's not in Canada - and he's here doing some programs on making butter sculptures and practicing the art of meditation. Why is he here? Well, I guess he wanted to come, maybe he was tired of living in high altitudes - I'm not sure. Yeah, he's Buddhist - what's Buddhism? Well, it's another religion, and Buddha is sort of like god, but not really. I liked that they were at least a little bit interested, but you could tell it wasn't quite clicking.....

One of the girls, as she left, asked if I would get paid extra for staying late to help kids make bead creatures - because I was, after all, "helping out the community" by doing this. Damn, could someone tell my boss that? Give that teen librarian a raise! I'll add her to my unofficial fan club - along with some of my after-school favourites and the girl that saw me in a local craft store after I had visited her school to talk about the library - she came up to me and said "Hey, you came to my school the other day! I went to library to get a library card but you weren't there and I have to go now ok bye!" .... I'm becoming internationally famous locally, as my father would say, or glocal (global yet local) according to my friend. I'm a star!

All I can is these recent 12 yr old conversations certainly beat out some of the other ones I have had in past months - my favourite being the two 11(ish) yr old boys who were talking about smoking and and one was asking to bum a smoke off the other: You're too young to smoke ... how old are you, anyway? Old enough to be your daddy, he replied. It's times like that when I really wish I could have witty comebacks, but it just wasn't meant to be, and besides, I was a little busy being surprised by his comment. Luckily I'll be prepared for the next time that some kid says he's "old enough to be my daddy". And isn't that what blogs were invented for - for all those people that wanted to have a witty comeback but couldn't think of it till 4 hrs later, and now they have the opportunity to write it on something that may never be heard or read but at least those people feel better for having written it? Just a theory.