Reality

The reality is that some teens hate to read. Some teens would literally rather have a tooth pulled than have to read anything, especially in front of other people. It is deeply, personally sad for me to think that one of the things that has brought me the most joy in my life could be so painful and shaming to a young person. But that's the reality for too many of our teens, especially the boys.

I met a young man last night named Billy. He is a resident at a group home for boys with severe enough emotional disabilities that the DOE has washed their hands of them. When we were introduced and he found out I was from the library he announced that he hated the library, he hated to read, he had never been to a library and he never would. Billy is 17.

I was able to get him to fill out the application for his library card without too much drama, begging or bribery. It was only after he had filled out the application, signed his card, started to examine it that he realized what he had done and demanded we take the card away because he would not touch it again. He also announced that he couldn't read; when I pointed out that he had filled out the paperwork with much less difficulty than many people I have met, Billy admitted that he reads just fine, he just hates to do it.

We have all heard this from teens, yes? There are lots of ways to respond to this and it was interesting for me to watch how the activities director and another young resident (a library user) both responded to Billy's histrionics.

Me, I played it cool. We will be taking the boys on a "field trip" to the library after the new year and while Billy swears he will be someplace else (another part of Queens, the Bahamas, anywhere but the residence), he did get his first library card. There were other boys there who refused to even come into the room to do that. So I'm pretty sure Billy will be on the van with the rest of unit, the staff and me, who just hopes she doesn't get car sick.

I'm pretty sure we'll win him over to our side on the visit, especially since he paraphrased my favorite t-shirt when I told him this ("I'd rather go over to the dark side," he said. "They have cookies."). After all, sometimes, we actually do have cookies. And we can certainly help him find out everything he could want to know about cookies, the dark side, dark matter, Star Wars, Wookiees, etc..

Score 1 for the librarians.


Cash in the Coffee Can: $138