If I Were To Catalogue This Post, it Would Go Somewhere in the 100's

More than any other institution I can think of, libraries emulate society, creating their own little hierarchies and communities within the greater clientele. Lots of kids, parents coming together through the medium of their kids, lonely twentysomething singles, the elderly and the homeless—every day of work at the Ames library is a pretty constant stream of these same groups, although I suppose I may just arrange the general public in such categories unduly, or spend too much fucking time at the library.

Either way, the extensiveness of the library’s programming, compounded with the relatively small market in Ames, frequently has the effect of exacerbating the visibility of these microcosmic social groups. It is with this notion in mind that I try to sort out my affinity for working with the library’s teen volunteers.

There are over 100 11-18 year olds (though mostly on the younger side) that come in weekly to clean shelves, sort books, and do other menial tasks while employees such as myself supervise, savoring the break from the menial tasks we would otherwise be doing. What fascinates me about my interaction with these kids is that the library’s environment, both by being a physically small space and putting parameters on the teens’ expected behavior, serves to accentuate the awkward adolescent dynamics. Thursday I learned that if someone is a “friend,” (quotation marks, of course, added physically at the time) then you hate talking to them but do it anyway. The “friend” carries a different, more subtly flirtatious social meaning than the friend or the friend.

The environment is especially interesting in how it can make me feel both closer and further removed from that pubescent period than I would have thought.

I’m close enough to understand how they see me. As someone who is still under twenty and doesn’t normally work with the volunteer program, I carry a sense of detachment from Authority that works in interesting ways. Remember the sub that you always got excited about because they’d let you get away with shit the regular teacher wouldn’t? It’s kind of like that, and I revel in seeing the baby steps that some of the volunteers will take to rebel using the space my person gives them—partially because they’re so hilariously trivial, and partially because its exactly what I would have done.

But that’s the other thing: I may have done all that, sure. But it would have carried the weight of my whole pride with it, the integrity of my Subversive Enough to be Interesting but Tamed Enough to be Allowed way of interacting with peers and authority figures. Get in-school-suspension for showing a girl the boys bathroom? I’d do it, but I’d be equally pissed if I missed that question about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in U.S. history as I would if no one knew I went into Victoria’s Secret stores on dares. It’s the same thing in the library, but in a different, arguably clearer context: a Led Zeppelin t-shirt can make one feel countercultural, but its hard when there’s a Library Volunteer pin stuck to it.

Of course now, with the help of my work situation, the contradictions are pretty clear. But it continually amazes me how deeply and for how long I lived those contradictions. Insulated rebellion is, apparently, long-lasting and completely mind-encompassing.

There are a couple places I could go from that realization: I could try, and likely fail, to identify the points at which what I stood for became more cohesive, or at least easily readable. But singling out the forces that most strongly catalyzed my maturation process seems unlikely at 19. What’s probably more plausible is that I embody the same sort of trifling deviance now, and it’s just considerably more difficult to recognize in context (which could be why it was so hard in 7th grade, too). I do, after all, spend most of my time on a campus where the security system is designed to accommodate this deviance. Maybe drinking beer in the woods is today’s sneaking into R-rated movies, although, at this point, the former has really ceased to feel subversive.

So the question, then, on my mind, is less when did I ever seriously find that sense of unified purpose (whether proactive or antagonistic, assimilatory or anti-authoritarian) as it is will I ever? The same goes for the teens in the program, for anyone who is profoundly ambivalent toward the idea of biting the hand that feeds them. It does seem weirdly premeditated in hindsight, though, the extent to which I’ve spent in this quasi-defiant limbo. But maybe it’s been so constant because it makes sense.

It’s probably better than losing any attachment to the safety net of real-life competence, and it sure beats losing that defiance at all.