Sis and I had a conversation yesterday where I mentioned my lie-detecting skills. To fill you all in, I have some sweet lie-detecting skills, especially if the person telling the lie is between the ages of eleven and fifteen. I have honed my skills at work, although, to be honest, one would have to be a pretty big idiot to not be able to detect the lies that the middle school students tell. It's just because they're so bad at it. Middle school students *cannot tell lies*.
It is physically impossible for someone between the ages of eleven and fifteen to pull off a proper lie. And it's hilarious watching one of them try. They become all sincere and earnestly try to look pious, while at the same time maintaining their cooler- and holier-than-thou attitudes. What makes it even better that middle school students are *smarter than adults*. That is why an adult can witness, with his own eyes, a middle school student sending text messages on his or her cell phone during class and be told that no, the student was not, in fact, sending text messages and furthermore, does not have a cell phone on his person. (Sidenote: "That was not on my person!!") The adult must be mistaken, because clearly, the middle school student is of higher intelligence. Middle school students know everything and they are always right. How is this? Well, for those of you adults out there who are unaware of your own condition, by the time one has reached the ripe, old age of thirteen, one has experienced and seen enough of life to become all-knowing. At the age of thirteen, there is no limit to one's knowledge. Parents, teachers, and other adults older than the cut-off age for knowledge (which is when one graduates from high school) have become senile in their old age and will, therefore, fall for anything that a middle school student will say. So, if a middle school student says, "I was not texting! I don't even have a phone!" we adults are supposed to take him or her at his or her word.
This leads me to something I observed today once I had arrived at the bibliotheque. I was standing in the stacks, looking for a book, when I heard a boy approach the reference desk and ask where the sex ed. books were located. Well, naturally, having just left the middle school where I work, my ears perked up and I looked around the bookshelf to see who was asking for the sex ed. book. (I was not at a library the students from my middle school would utilize, so I wasn't looking to see if it was a student that I know, I just wanted to see what the reference librarians' reactions would be). The person who was inquiring as to the location of the sex ed. books was, in my rough estimate, fourteen years old, and the reference librarian was, again in my rough estimate, a sixty-seven year old woman. As I predicted, the reference librarian immediately passed this boy off to the other reference librarian to cover her complete and utter embarassment that a fourteen year old boy was asking for books about "sex ed." The first librarian totally tried to cover herself by saying, "Umm, I'm not sure, let's ask so-and-so." But a person with my lie-detecting skills could see right through that statement (and I was shortly proved to be correct). The other reference librarian, a woman who was probably in her mid-forties, asked the boy what he needed and he repeated his request for help in finding the sex ed. books. The kicker? The kid actually said, "I've been absent and missed that part of health class," as the reason as to why he wished to view the sex ed. books. I almost broke down right there and called that kid on his flimsy lie, after I stopped hysterically laughing (it was a quiet laugh, I was in the library, after all). I was impressed with the second librarian, she calmly looked up the books on her computer and led him to the "sex ed." section. How was I proved to be correct about the first librarian? When the second lady came back to the desk, the first asked her, "It was in the 600s, right?"
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4 comments:
I've yet to get any sex ed questions, but I'm the youngster at the desk, so kids would probably more likely approach me than my coworkers.
My reaction, though, would probably be kind of snarky. Like, "you only spend a day on sex ed in health class? That's a bummer you happened to miss that ONE day." The snarkiness (aka, my "astonishment" over his unfortunate lack of knowledge) would probably go unnoticed by the kid, who would think he's triumphant in his lie. I have already graduated from high school, so I've started the downhill slide back to idiocy.
Oh, man! Dude's just trying to save some dignity and figure out why he's got hair growing everywhere and you go and blog about him in a mean tone. That just hardly seems right. At least he's READING about it instead of Googling things. (Yikes!)
I don't know about the whole idea of you being more approachable than say, forty-year old woman behind the reference desk. You may be young enough to embarass the kid. It works that way, too. Like, I'm a fourteen-year-old boy, am I really going to ask the librarian who looks like she is twenty for help in finding books about SEX? Yikes!
I do like the whole, "That's a total bummer that you HAPPENED to be absent the ONE day your class discussed this topic," comment.
The Chuck's got a good point. I can totally believe that it is probably way less embarassing to go find a book at the library than to sit through a health class listening to a lecture about sex and puberty and body parts with your middle school peers. And, I'm certain that the library has more reliable resources than a random Google search would turn up.
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