another sign i've grown up (kids these days part ii)

There's the fact that I'm now the sort of person who, instead of causing a spritely ruckus in a public place, wants to grouchily quote the New York Times about the young folk causing a ruckus in a public place. One of the boys is wearing an example of those cartoony sweatshirts the Times Style section was reporting on a few weeks ago. These kids are talking outrageously loudly, playing music, breaking things that sound like glass, and singing. The girls are tee-heeing in squeaky voices in order to indicate to the boys how they are good girls enough to protest but bad girls enough to secretly think the boys being baaaad are sexxxxy. It's a public library for god's sake. I read another NY Times story, or maybe it was npr (so old, so very old), about a town that had to close its public library in the after-school hours because the kids were making too many scenes and vandalizing too much. I want to tell these kids to go to the mall. I also want to be shocked that no librarian has chosen to take these kids to task, but in the end, I decide that it's yet another example of adults not wanting to mess with kids who might be considered "dangerous." I mean, the bulk of them are African American, and you know what that might mean. Sheesh. Stove, how's that essay on fear coming? Because I think the aforementioned would be an interesting kind of fear to tackle writing about.