At Work Again

We now have a picture of the kid who was looking at the dirty images. Now I will be able to use my evil librarian prowess to defeat him in his act of exhibitionist perversion, banning him from our computers for life!

Or, at least I will feel like only some of our kids are perverse, not all. But middle school boys...you know how it is. The few that are already into girls are really into girls, and they get pretty terrible about this sort of thing. I remember in junior high and high school, these were the guys with the almost-naked-but-not-quite pictures of girls in their lockers.

I always thought that it would have been totally within the rights of our administration to take those pictures down, since they might not have been intended as sexual harassment, but they were (are). This would normally be the place where I would start a rant about why that qualifies as sexual harassment, but I'm repressing the urge right now. I can repress the urge.

See?

That right there proves that I don't have to rant.

Now, the reason why that is, in my view, considered sexual harassment, is that pictures of naked or near-naked women (or men) creates a sexually charged environment: i.e. women are placed in a locale with men lusting after them and they know it. Also, women are then keenly aware that they exist as an object of that desire within that particular location. So, if the kid next to me has a picture of a near-naked girl, which he did, I would know that might think of me or any other number of girls in the building solely as an object of lust.

Which is gross. And it made me avoid that kid like the plague, as well as my locker which was too close to his for comfort. He was gross, too.

So I did what any self-respecting girl would do. I got a hall pass, opened his unlocked locker, and took out the picture. Then I ripped it up and flushed it before returning to class.

I was quite pleased with myself.

It was quite freeing. My motto in high school was to never involve our messed-up administration with anything I could handle myself in a covert way. That gave me certain permissions to do things I, as a good girl, would never have done otherwise. Like removing someones personal property from their locker. Because of this, I also ended up with a group of class-skipping people who knew about my quest for justice (due to witnessing one of my stealth trips to this kids locker as this happened a couple of times). They thought it was hilarious and were impressed enough to actually learn my name and talk to me from time to time.

I was very shy in high school. Most people now don't remember me being there at all.

That guy never did figure out what was happening. He wasn't all that smart. Popular, though. He thought some of his friends were doing it. He would yell at them, and swear, and I would just be there getting out my band stuff, and no one ever was the wiser.

But it wasn't like he wouldn't have gotten caught with them eventually. See, I was pretty sure he kept pot in there too. Kind of makes me wish I'd turned him in for the picture. It would have all ended a lot funnier that way.