ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 13, 1997 TAG: 9701130092
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: MONTY S. LEITCH
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
I SAT by myself in a small public library - one very near here - apparently reading magazines. Actually, I was observing: watching out of the corners of my eyes, and eavesdropping on, the mating rituals of the teen-agers around me.
They were young. Too young to drive, or they wouldn't have been sitting in the library, waiting on their rides.
The girls were sitting in groups at tables, some of them still wearing their "baby fat" in the pretty little pouches of their cheeks.
The boys were cruising. They roamed back and forth from one end of the library to the other, pretending to disdain the watching girls.
As the girls pretended to disdain the roving boys.
Suddenly, to my left, the girls fluttered excitedly. If they'd had wings, they would have ruffled their feathers. There he is, that's him, don't look, that's the one I was telling you about.
The boy they meant was taller than the other boys. I could see that, even without completely raising my head. And he didn't merely roam, either; he strutted.
Nor did he miss the flurry he excited. As he passed the girls' table, he looked directly at them. If they'd wings, they would have risen in a rush.
What kind of a boy was this? I had to know. I looked up. I looked directly at him.
A skinny fellow with glasses. Small-boned and loose-limbed, and not so tall as I'd first thought. Wearing a loose-fitting jacket and baseball cap. Not, in my estimation, "cute."
But what do I know about "good-looking" these days? About the traits that will turn a girl's head?
Obviously, nothing. Because when the boy strutted back to the girls' table and asked if he could sit down, they flurried and fluttered. Assented. And he sat.
They asked where he was from.
They asked his age, his last name.
They asked if he was really the one who'd hit that red-headed kid?
They asked if he was still in school, and then, why he had quit.
He said, I been in jail.
He said - could this be true? - that he'd been in jail because he'd tried to kill his parents. That he'd been smoking crack, and when his parents tried to kick in the door to his room, he took a knife and went after them. He said he'd had a psychological evaluation, but his lawyer had told the judge that he needed to be in jail. He said he was 17 years old.
The girls leaned forward as he talked. They asked more questions. More and more. Then, they went outside with him for a smoke, telling each other on the way which stores would sell cigarettes to minors.
Meanwhile, I sat staring at my magazine, pretending to read, pretending I didn't believe a word that I'd heard. Pretending that those pretty little girls had not found the boy's criminal record, real or imagined, the most alluring characteristic of a skinny, 17-year-old boy. Pretending that this was some overblown bit of dialogue from "reality TV" instead of an overheard conversation in my favorite local library, after school.
I know a few teen-agers personally. I try to listen to what they say, I try to hear behind the words they spout the honesty of their lives. But nothing I've heard prepared me for this one overheard conversation, nor did anything from my life: The most dangerous trait of the "bad boy" who melted my 14-year-old heart was that he drove his brother's car fast on back roads, without a license.
For all my life, I've sought sanctuary in libraries. Even when I was a girl.
What will become of those fragile, feathery girls I watched?
And what will become of that small-boned boy?
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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