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i went to dunkin with my mom and attempted to order a drink but i forgot the name of it so i was like "it's like a... cocoa latte thing? signature cocoa latte? you know?" and she was like "oh yeah i gotchu" and then proceeded to give me an iced latte with two pumps of chocolate syrup and i had to go back and ask for it to be decaf and it seems like they wrote "DECAF" on the cup but failed to put decaf IN the cup and i am shaking out of my skin lol i love you rebecca but i want to restart that conversation with you i don't think that went how either of us intended
so after a confusing (but delicious, the way fast food tries too hard to be delicious) breakfast i went to the library to VOTE because there's a run-off election for a texas senator today and i was on the fence about going really but yesterday someone said "but you vote, right?" and i knew the only correct possible answer was yes, so i confidently said yes, and then today i had to live up to that answer, and i even went so far as to drag my mom with me even though she really didn't want to go cuz she didn't see the point.
so we cast our votes and then we were already in the library so we went looking for books and i pretty much wandered into an aisle and immediately spotted a book called Ghost Town by Kevin Chen that turned out to be about a gay man who grew up in Taiwan, escaped to Germany, committed some mysterious heinous crime (it's looking like it's going to be murder), and then had to go back to his hometown to confront his traumatic childhood. and i'm Taiwanese and LGBTQ+ so i was like yeah! okay! this is the one! and then i went and found my Taiwanese mom in the kids' section and i (again, immediately) spotted a book called... ngl i don't remember what it was called but it turned out to be about a Taiwanese girl who moves to California and has to figure out English and get her grades up enough so that she can go to CAMP ROCK OUT in the summer and that was cute and honestly insane that i found two Taiwanese books right off the bat. so we spent half an hour reading those
and while we were doing that this white mom sat across from us and she was on her phone (booooo) for a while until her son came up to her, maybe 9-10 years old? and he asked if he could get this one book. and she said NO. instantly. abruptly. and he was like why? i watched the movie. and she said she read the book and there's a part in there that's not for kids and he kinda just stood there sadly, silently, as if hoping her mom might change her mind in the next couple of seconds, and then he walked away to find something else. and i was like aw. why are you discouraging this kid from reading. tbf i don't know what the book was and maybe there's randomly an explicit sex scene in it, but i also kind of doubt that. and then later a boy sat next to the mom and started reading... a Captain Underpants book. and tbh i'm not sure if it was the same kid or his brother cuz they looked so so similar, but i was extra sad that he was reading a graphic novel now. and he had this entire cart of books, and all of them were Captain Underpants books?! not a single words-only book?! like these boys were so excited running around to find books at the library, but then all they actually got were... these things. and don't get me wrong, i appreciated the Captain Underpants series when i was a kid; i read as many as i could find, but again. not a single words-only book! i read millions of THOSE too.
so anyway let your kids read adult books. i truly genuinely don't see the harm. if you don't want your kids to learn the wrong things, talk to them and teach them the right things. or give them the right books. ask librarians for the right books. they know so much????
so after a confusing (but delicious, the way fast food tries too hard to be delicious) breakfast i went to the library to VOTE because there's a run-off election for a texas senator today and i was on the fence about going really but yesterday someone said "but you vote, right?" and i knew the only correct possible answer was yes, so i confidently said yes, and then today i had to live up to that answer, and i even went so far as to drag my mom with me even though she really didn't want to go cuz she didn't see the point.
so we cast our votes and then we were already in the library so we went looking for books and i pretty much wandered into an aisle and immediately spotted a book called Ghost Town by Kevin Chen that turned out to be about a gay man who grew up in Taiwan, escaped to Germany, committed some mysterious heinous crime (it's looking like it's going to be murder), and then had to go back to his hometown to confront his traumatic childhood. and i'm Taiwanese and LGBTQ+ so i was like yeah! okay! this is the one! and then i went and found my Taiwanese mom in the kids' section and i (again, immediately) spotted a book called... ngl i don't remember what it was called but it turned out to be about a Taiwanese girl who moves to California and has to figure out English and get her grades up enough so that she can go to CAMP ROCK OUT in the summer and that was cute and honestly insane that i found two Taiwanese books right off the bat. so we spent half an hour reading those
and while we were doing that this white mom sat across from us and she was on her phone (booooo) for a while until her son came up to her, maybe 9-10 years old? and he asked if he could get this one book. and she said NO. instantly. abruptly. and he was like why? i watched the movie. and she said she read the book and there's a part in there that's not for kids and he kinda just stood there sadly, silently, as if hoping her mom might change her mind in the next couple of seconds, and then he walked away to find something else. and i was like aw. why are you discouraging this kid from reading. tbf i don't know what the book was and maybe there's randomly an explicit sex scene in it, but i also kind of doubt that. and then later a boy sat next to the mom and started reading... a Captain Underpants book. and tbh i'm not sure if it was the same kid or his brother cuz they looked so so similar, but i was extra sad that he was reading a graphic novel now. and he had this entire cart of books, and all of them were Captain Underpants books?! not a single words-only book?! like these boys were so excited running around to find books at the library, but then all they actually got were... these things. and don't get me wrong, i appreciated the Captain Underpants series when i was a kid; i read as many as i could find, but again. not a single words-only book! i read millions of THOSE too.
so anyway let your kids read adult books. i truly genuinely don't see the harm. if you don't want your kids to learn the wrong things, talk to them and teach them the right things. or give them the right books. ask librarians for the right books. they know so much????
