A few years ago I worked part-time at the local college library. They paid me a decent hourly wage, gave me $65,000 to spend on books and materials to fill their shelves, and handed me the opportunity to go to college for free. This particular library was both a college library and a public library so not only did I get to interact with students, I had the pleasure of working with many different types of people.
Ken and his wife were avid kayakers and constantly visited with one of our library employees (also named Ken) to share their kayaking tales. Lynnette was like Supermom to her three young children in tow (and one on the way) who always returned their books on time and never failed to use their manners. Brandon, one of our nicest college students, was constantly getting failing grades on his composition assignments and visited with our tutor nearly everyday. There was a Sunday School teacher who liked to scream obscenities at our computers alot. Then there was Rinaldo.
Rinaldo was very friendly but a little different, though how different we wouldn't know until much later. For months he would bring in his little girl (we'll call her Jenny) and chat with the staff for a bit before taking Jenny to the children's section. Jenny would collect a few books for herself and sit patiently, usually for hours at a time, while Rinaldo used one of the public library's computers and wasted the day away.
Now I feel I can justifiably say that Rinaldo wasted his day because he had already explained to me many, many times that his wife was the breadwinner and they comfortably decided he would be the one to stay home with the kids (besides Jenny, there were two older boys). His wife also spent alot of time out of town on business but during her periods of in-town business, Rinaldo took advantage of his free time and opted to volunteer as a nude model at Jacksonville University. He oftentimes apologized for forgetting his portfolio as he believed that I, a fellow creative-type, would be highly interested in seeing him in his birthday suit.
Um, no thanks. For the tenth time.
Eventually, the library staff began to notice some questionable content popping up on the corner-facing computers he preferred to use (location, location, location!) and decided to start checking each computer's history after he left every day. There was alot of PORN and nobody was really surprised. However, politics came into play as we had to report these findings to the public library staff. Other public library branches would not allow such generous access on their computers but because our library also served the college population, no blocks were ever permitted to be installed. The reason being this: If a nursing student needs to look up sexually transmitted disease, then that student needs to see and read everything related to sexually transmitted diseases. This includes pictures of boobies and vajayjays.
We warned Rinaldo that he really needed to cut the crap, to be a little more considerate of the fact that other people were being exposed to the same perverted scenes he so thoroughly enjoyed watching on the computer. He would become embarrassed, apologize profusely, then take his little girl home until the next day. This went on for about a week. Finally, we did another history search and found a porn site that just sent our head librarian over the edge. It wasn't kiddie porn but it may as well have been. The adults involved in this porn site were dressed up as if they were little kids. And that's sick as shit. When Rinaldo and Jenny showed up the next day, they were turned away and told to never return or he would be trespassed. I hated to send that little girl home with him as our suspicions had worsened, but there was nothing we could do.
So you can imagine my disgust when I took my daughter to her gymnastics class on Tuesday night and saw him, Rinaldo, sitting on the waiting room couch, watching Jenny (and every other little girl, including my daughter!) do her warm-ups. We quickly acknowledged each other's presence but didn't exchange a word. He knew better. I bit my tongue and wondered what I should do about this, if anything. Of course he has every right to be there, to watch his daughter enjoy the companionship and plain good fun of learning gymnastics with other little girls. Except I have already seen what goes through this man's mind when he sees other little girls, or legal-aged girls pretending to be little girls. I wanted to kick him in the nads and drag his ass into the parking lot and let every mother in the room have a swing at him. It will be interesting to see if he returns next week.
What would you do? I'm really curious to know how other people might react to something like this. While a part of me wants to tell every parent who is also there with their child, another part of me wants to believe that he simply leaves his fantasies at the computer. Am I overreacting? Am I giving him too much of the benefit of the doubt?
1 comment:
From a legal standpoint, you have to be careful about what you tell others.
That being said, I wouldn't trust that his addictions or fantasies stop at the computer. You hear too many stories about how people who committed sex crimes were addicted to porn, etc. I don't think you're overreacting at all.
If you're lucky, maybe he'll be embarrassed enough to quit bringing his kid there, now that he knows you're there.
Post a Comment