Cuban Miss Crisis

So today I decided to go down to the Jacksonville Public Library and get myself a card so I can do me some book-learnin', and I pretty much just ended up sittin' at a table by myself reading Spin magazine for an hour because M.I.A. was on the cover with two colors of lipstick on. I'm easily distracted, what can I say. We could spend the rest of this post psychoanalyzing the fact that I didn't lose interest even after realizing she was pregnant in all her photo-spreads, but I don't feel like being judged by nerds who read blogs all day, so let's get back to the story I wanna tell. DO YOU MIND?!!

Okay, so I fully expected to get distracted by a female at the library, real or in print. Honestly I expect that regardless, anywhere I go. But what I didn't expect to happen was for one of the best things I've ever seen at a public library to unfold right in front of my eyes. Not the best, mind you. That honor still goes to the time I saw a dirty ass homeless dude with no shirt on reading Marques De Sade in a downtown Austin library. But one of the best, definitely.

So I'm just sittin' at the table, minding my own business, reading some incredibly hilarious graduate student/Spin editor yap about how wrinkled and irrelevant Madonna is these days. Yeah.......kinda like your own writing career, right Studs Urkel? I'm sure his parents get a free Spin subscription every month and use it to wrap fish patties. Anyway, where was I........oh yeah, so I'm sittin' there when this older hispanic lady comes and sits at the table in front of mine (I was gonna say Mexican, but I forgot I'm not in Texas anymore. Fun fact: Cubans will fight you for calling them Mexicans, don't ask me how I learned that). So she sits down, pulls out her cell phone, and apparently calls her husband's divorce attorney because the conversation that proceeds is one of the loudest, most spiteful, curse-filled tirade I've ever heard. Not just in the middle of a library, but anywhere. The fact that it was in a library is what took it from slightly uncomfortable to high comedy.

She's screeching about how her "crazy fucking" daughter needs counseling, and how her "dumb dick" husband isn't gonna get anywhere near either of them ever again, or she's gonna call the police so he can "get fucked daily in prison like he's fucked me every day for the last 7 miserable years."

After like 4 long and hilarious minutes of this, a security guard finally stops laughing for long enough to get up and tell her, very politely, to take her phone call outside. The lady stops mid-sentence, stares at the security guard like she just crawled through her bedroom window to tell her to stop talking so loud, and she just says........no, let me put this a different way, I don't think I'm doing it justice..........she doesn't just say this, she yells it. All at the same pitch, no breaks or breaths or punctuation. She goes:

"CAN YOU PLEASE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE I'M HAVING A SERIOUS DISCUSSION HERE THANK YOU!!!"

The security guard tries to keep herself composed, and now she's asking her to leave. The lady's trying to continue her phone call. The guard asks again nicely. The lady walks five feet over to a rack of romance novels, picks one up and hurls it at the security guard's face. It just barely misses.

I lost it. My sides were hurtin'.

The security guard didn't find it as funny as me, she definitely had to remind herself real quick she was a library employee and not Layla Ali, cuz I saw the fire in her eyes. The old lady woulda got molly-wopped in the home & gardening aisle for real, she had no reach and I'm pretty sure she was on some kinda pills. Sadly there was no fight though, instead the security guard just sat back down, calmly picked up the phone and called the police. But at this point the lady has her back turned, so she's still goin' on with her conversation like nothing happened. Then, I swear to god, she looks up right at me and gives me this look like "Can you believe some people? Geez", like she just stood up to a schoolyard bully or some shit. Like we're all on her side. I gave her a look back like, "bitch this ain't the mighty ducks, why are you acting like the cops aren't coming? I hope you ain't on that pretty pink iphone pissing off the only lawyer you know right now."

Fast forward to 10 minutes later, Jacksonville's finest are in front of the library. She walks up to the front to give her side of the story, but they ain't wasting any time, just start escorting her out and to the car, and she's doing the famous let-go-of-me-I-can-do-it-myself move that old white ladies seem to love to bust out whenever the cops come. She's trying to tell the cops something, but they're not listening. She's telling them she left her purse at the table. I didn't even notice. I looked over, and there it is.

And there it goes.

Some kid just walks by and grabs it all nonchalant, looks at me with a big ass grin on his face. Got himself a new pink Iphone.