Opinion

Library Musings

This is about the girl over your shoulder.

I shifted my pencil to the middle of the table, so it wouldn’t tumble off the side and crash into the floor as it did last time. What a disaster that was. Everyone in the room glared at as if I had committed first-degree murder.

This time, it’s not me though. I didn’t do anything. I sit in my seat content with myself, knowing that the heat of the room’s stare rests on a true sideshow clown. A girl a few tables down from me, about thirty seconds ago, nose pooped. Yet, it wasn’t even a loud sneeze, and fairly normal as strange as they can come. The problem arose post-snot ejection, when a giant, doofy grin spread her face wide, enlarging her cheeks to the width of an ox’s ass. She threw her head back in jest, as if there was something funny about her disease. Her face was the color of a chafed tit, I thought to myself. A curtain of disgust descended over her presumed friend’s face, yet her smile went nowhere. She brandished it like a trophy… a trophy of golden norovirus plastic and Monoglue.

Fixing her snot-smeared hair as her performance ensued, she surveyed the room nervously. Much like the energy of a rabid dog staring into the eyes of his forlorn owner, her gaze locked in with every other in the room, seemingly pleading us for understanding, for an anti-rabies shot, for a treat. Christ she doesn’t understand that I’ll never give her a bone.