Yikes

I have so!!! many!!! ideas!!! for!!! it!!!

It would be called THE BOOK NOOK and I would hire a local artist to paint the walls. The kids section would be all COLORS AND MAGIC and have comfy floors and pillows!! There would be a donation section for old books and toys for kids too little!! And it would offer a short-term babysitting area for families with low income!! There would be a little Harry Potter turret and a bookcase that looks like the wardrobe from Narnia!

I’d talk to a local bakery about running a cafe instead of a Starbucks! It’d offer free wifi!

There’d be a student discount and a military discount but also one for people learning English as a second language because that’s hard! There’d be books in other languages! Not just how to speak other languages but romances and horrors and thrillers and comedies because those exist in other languages than English and sometimes people want to read them!

We’d offer computer literacy classes for however much you could pay! And writers workshops! Tabletop game nights! There’d be volunteer tutoring and peer review for kids who need help in school!

There would be a Whole Big LGBT Section. I’d work with independent publishers and small LGBT publishing companies to have a great big LGBT section. And also in that section would be contact information in case you ever needed to talk to someone!

There would be textbook loaning services better than that bullshit university bookstores put you through! And my employees would get time and half on holidays, not just Christian holidays like Christmas and Easer but holidays Hanukkah and Passover and Ramadan! And mental health days!

She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

Mom: What are you doing.

So one day I came home from school and this new lady in the block was walking her poodle (? It was small, white and curly but I don’t know jack shit about dogs tbh) a few meters in front of me. When they reached our driveway, the dog swerved right and dropped like six or seven turds while walking, a few paces in between each. I didn’t even know dogs did that. The lady didn’t even bother.

That was too much. My pride as a driveway-sweeper was hurt. “Excuse me, ma'am, you lost something on our driveway!”, I yelled. But she just turned around, sneered at me and went on like nothing happened. Then it struck me - it must have been her dog that had ruined my driveway with increasing frequency lately!

So I did what any reasonable nine year old would do: I grabbed my trusty shovel, swept all the turds on there and marched over to her house (being paranoid someone would see me and I’d get in trouble all the while) and dumped them on her doorstep, patting them firmly into the mat with my shovel and ringing the bell when I was satisfied with the mess, then running away and giggling maniacally.