It rained today. It was a much-needed reprieve from the stifling heat of late, but it hit with the kind of suddenness that you experience in a car accident (i.e., cruising along, scream, crash, scream some more, pee your pants a little, curse).
The thermometers were indicating we were around 90ยบ with oppressive humidity and the sun was blazing down and giving me an instant headache just walking to my car. We needed rain.
The heat and humidity held out until it disappeared one second and thunder crashed the next.
Was that really thunder? Are kids firing off some early firecrackers?
Another rumble answered the question and within seconds the rain was pounding so hard on our metal roof, it seemed as if it might cave in.
People wandered into the library with that what-the-fuck look on their faces, as if they had been strolling happily from their car to our front door, and a large tub of water was dumped on them as they neared the sidewalk.
Sure, the weathermen warned of storms. Sure, the thunderstorm watches were in effect. Sure, it was something we all thought MIGHT happen today. But after our “Storm of the Century” a week ago, not too many people gave the rain a second thought.
RAIN-SCHMAIN! I’ll believe it when I see it.
Well, weren’t we surprised?
On cue, the Park District next door promptly sounded the get-the-fuck-out-of-the-pool-because-there’s-lightning-somewhere-in-the-county alarm and evicted a large public pool full of teens and preteens onto the streets. Gee, I wonder where they’re going to go.
With the rain came the teens.
We’re not just talking about a bunch of boisterous kids with excess energy to burn. We’re talking about boisterous kids with excess energy to bury, sopping wet, running around the library in their swimsuits.
There were two girls who couldn’t have been more than 15 years old who walked into the library wearing flip-flops and a bikini. Oh, and a wet towel flung carelessly over the shoulder. A bikini. They were old enough to have some curves to fill in the bikini, but not old enough to have any sense of time and place for the appropriate setting for this bikini.
There’s nothing like some underage girls in bikinis to make the seniors reading their newspaper grab hold of their pacemaker through their chest and hope it does its job.
Grandpa doesn’t need to see that, Ashley! That’s why they make those cute cover ups. SO YOU’LL COVER THE HELL UP!
This was a bit much. Everyone was oogling them; man, woman, adult, child.
I cautiously threw an email to my boss before I told these girls that we required clothes for admittance into the library.
I wrote the following:
The thermometers were indicating we were around 90ยบ with oppressive humidity and the sun was blazing down and giving me an instant headache just walking to my car. We needed rain.
The heat and humidity held out until it disappeared one second and thunder crashed the next.
Was that really thunder? Are kids firing off some early firecrackers?
Another rumble answered the question and within seconds the rain was pounding so hard on our metal roof, it seemed as if it might cave in.
People wandered into the library with that what-the-fuck look on their faces, as if they had been strolling happily from their car to our front door, and a large tub of water was dumped on them as they neared the sidewalk.
Sure, the weathermen warned of storms. Sure, the thunderstorm watches were in effect. Sure, it was something we all thought MIGHT happen today. But after our “Storm of the Century” a week ago, not too many people gave the rain a second thought.
RAIN-SCHMAIN! I’ll believe it when I see it.
Well, weren’t we surprised?
On cue, the Park District next door promptly sounded the get-the-fuck-out-of-the-pool-because-there’s-lightning-somewhere-in-the-county alarm and evicted a large public pool full of teens and preteens onto the streets. Gee, I wonder where they’re going to go.
With the rain came the teens.
We’re not just talking about a bunch of boisterous kids with excess energy to burn. We’re talking about boisterous kids with excess energy to bury, sopping wet, running around the library in their swimsuits.
There were two girls who couldn’t have been more than 15 years old who walked into the library wearing flip-flops and a bikini. Oh, and a wet towel flung carelessly over the shoulder. A bikini. They were old enough to have some curves to fill in the bikini, but not old enough to have any sense of time and place for the appropriate setting for this bikini.
There’s nothing like some underage girls in bikinis to make the seniors reading their newspaper grab hold of their pacemaker through their chest and hope it does its job.
Grandpa doesn’t need to see that, Ashley! That’s why they make those cute cover ups. SO YOU’LL COVER THE HELL UP!
This was a bit much. Everyone was oogling them; man, woman, adult, child.
I cautiously threw an email to my boss before I told these girls that we required clothes for admittance into the library.
I wrote the following:
For many days now, we've all observed many a patron coming into the library wearing only a wet bathing suit and wet towel, and we've longed for the days when there was signage saying that we did not allow you to come in with your wet pool clothes on. Is this still a policy minus a sign, or are we allowing sopping and chlorinated patrons to come in and sit on our furniture? Should I send them to the Quiet Room to dry off? :)
(The Quiet Room is our new service, which probably would float in communities where the patron majority was of legal age, but here, having a quiet room in the back of the library, with weak lighting and soft, comfy chairs, some of us think is the equivalent of inviting the teens to have world-record-breaking orgies. We are SOOOO going to get sued when someone’s parents find out their daughter banged three guys in the Quiet Room.)
My boss strolled out to have a look at the library’s swimsuit edition, and he skeptically scanned the horizon for offenders, whereupon the harmless summer clothing turned nightmareishly into pedophile paradise.
His eyes sprang out of his head with an audible boi-yoi-yoi-yoing, and he assessed the view with increasing concern.
“Oh… OH! OOOOHHHH!”
With typical efficiency I have come to expect, he went a-lookin’ for some administrative-ish folks.
No director. Assistant director missing in action.
My boss made the error of walking into the meeting room where a Red Cross blood drive was going on. Like ravenous vampires they descended upon him, wanting to start the preparatory interview work of making sure his blood was pure and sweet enough. He quickly fled. I like to imagine that the big, manly guy screamed like a little girl and ran out with his hands waving in the air wildly, calling for his mommy, but I’m sure it didn’t happen. It just makes me smile to imagine it.
Rattled from nearly losing his life, or worse, his soul, he decided the swimsuit question could wait.
Thus, all afternoon, I sat listening to the rain, the squeals of teenage delight upon seeing one another after the eternal waiting period of less than 24 hours, and gasps of adults who caught glimpses of the girls in bikinis.
It’s going to be a LONG summer.
My boss strolled out to have a look at the library’s swimsuit edition, and he skeptically scanned the horizon for offenders, whereupon the harmless summer clothing turned nightmareishly into pedophile paradise.
His eyes sprang out of his head with an audible boi-yoi-yoi-yoing, and he assessed the view with increasing concern.
“Oh… OH! OOOOHHHH!”
With typical efficiency I have come to expect, he went a-lookin’ for some administrative-ish folks.
No director. Assistant director missing in action.
My boss made the error of walking into the meeting room where a Red Cross blood drive was going on. Like ravenous vampires they descended upon him, wanting to start the preparatory interview work of making sure his blood was pure and sweet enough. He quickly fled. I like to imagine that the big, manly guy screamed like a little girl and ran out with his hands waving in the air wildly, calling for his mommy, but I’m sure it didn’t happen. It just makes me smile to imagine it.
Rattled from nearly losing his life, or worse, his soul, he decided the swimsuit question could wait.
Thus, all afternoon, I sat listening to the rain, the squeals of teenage delight upon seeing one another after the eternal waiting period of less than 24 hours, and gasps of adults who caught glimpses of the girls in bikinis.
It’s going to be a LONG summer.
