Beautiful People Don’t Get Sick

I keep getting onto this blog with the intention of writing about why everyone should want to be best friends with Nathan Fillion. Then I remember something that happened in my real life and decide that I need to write about that instead.

So a good friend of mine is sick and has to have chemical treatments. Treatments that take a long time. Yesterday I took her to her treatment and looked away while the nurse stuck her with a bunch of needles and attached tubes to her arm, just because I don’t like the pain even if it belongs to someone else. Then we hung out for the next six hours (we were not prepared for it to take so long. Next time we’ll bring a computer and watch Firefly).

A couple of hours into hanging out in the treatment an older woman walked over to my friend and told my friend “you are far too pretty to be in a place like this.”  Which, of course, we took very well, politely thanking her and talking to her for a minute. After the woman left I turned to my friend and said, “I didn’t know that beautiful people were immune to disease. If I had I would have actually put forth an effort.”

I know the woman was just being nice. It was a very nice thing to say. She was worried about the fact that two young women were sitting in a treatment center and one of them had a big bag of chemicals dribbling into her arm. It was just that the implication was that beautiful people don’t get sick and if that was really a way to keep from coming down with things like cancer and leukemia I would put forth a lot more of an effort. I would also wonder what they were putting in cosmetics and why we had not harnessed that magical cure yet. Seriously.

Or did she mean that beautiful people somehow are genetically immune to such things? I don’t know.

It was a very kind statement but also kind of ridiculous. First of all I really do think that everyone has there own beauty whether or not they fit into society’s little box. So to say that someone is “too beautiful” to be in a place like that seems absurd to me. Everyone is beautiful and also beautiful people get sick. It is a tragic fact of life. I’ll bet Tom Hiddleston and Natalie Portman (who are some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen) still suffer from the occasional cold and flu (that is not on the same level but still).

I didn’t really have a point to all of this I just kind of wanted to share.

I want a little credit for not being a public menace

Yesterday I went to the library and didn’t make anyone cry or call anyone an idiot. You should really be impressed with me for that. It is more difficult than you might think. In fact, most of my stories about my local library end with the phrase “and that’s why I’m not allowed back there.” I have a hard time at my local branch of the county library. Mostly because it is badly organized but also because I may have said to one of them that the only way to fix how badly organized it is would be to put a match to the whole place and start over.

One of the last times I got mad at the librarians was when I was looking for a book that should have been on one shelf with all the authors who’s names start with D but I found it on a shelf with all the authors who’s names start with O. I pointed out to the librarian that some of the books in that section were miss-shelved and they should send someone through to fix it when they got a chance. I’ve had dealings with this particular woman before (remember how I said that they should just burn it down and start over? Yeah that was her). She puffed up her chest and said “well I’m sorry that we do not use your crazy system for organizing books.” “My crazy system? It’s called the alphabet.”

Yeah, I really should not be allowed back there.

Seeing as it is a public library they cannot ban me, even if I am a public menace, but they really ought to. I don’t know where I would get my books if they did but they really should just ban me. I don’t know what it is, I walk into badly ran libraries and turn into an enormous green rage monster, I’ve never once been exposed to gamma radiation.

So a few days ago I was at the library seeing if I could get a book renewed. They only gave me three weeks with it and I checked it out with three other books. I was trying to obey the rules. The rules say that if you can’t return a book on time you renew it. I had never seen the woman I spoke to before so I assumed she must be new. Not wanting to be put on another librarians black list I decided to just be polite. “Hello, can I renew this book.” “Well let’s find out.” She smiled broadly and scanned the book. Then her smile disappeared. She got very flustered and kept glancing back at the librarian who hates me. “I’m so sorry, I can’t renew it for you because there are holds on it but… um… if you want you can just return it late. You have a week before you start accumulating late fees. I’m sure… um… that would be fine.”

Oh my gosh, there is a note on my library account telling them not to upset me. 

“Oh, okay. I’ll just do that I guess.” I picked up the book and walked out of the library.

The thing is I don’t try to be a public menace. They’re the ones who started it. I usually go into the library with the intention of quietly getting a book and then leaving. It was one of the librarians who not so gently reminded me when I was wearing a cropped tank top that “children come to this library” and I need to dress appropriately. It was the librarians who improperly shelved those books and tried to tell me that a book I read in college didn’t exist. I was not the one who fired the first shots in this situation… I just had a bigger army than they were expecting. I’m not trying to be a public menace it’s just in my nature to not accept rules just because they are rules (and I do not like to be false to my nature).

I just want a little credit for going to the library and not making anyone cry. Is that really so much to ask for?