[Image: Hi Dr. Garner. My name is K—— and my son Matthew was a little stinker today at the library. He went to play on my computer but instead he played on a student of yours computer in the library that looked just like mine but with stickers. Anyways he wrote Jesus in big letters thinking I’d be real proud of him. When your student Megan came back from the bathroom I guess he deleted a paper or something she was working on. He wanted to save it to show daddy when he got back from the store. She was real angry and said I had to email you. Anyways, please don’t fail Megan because my son wanted to do something nice. What he did was wrong and I told him so but he’s only five and real smart lol. I am emailing you the file he made to. Thank you very much.]

So this happened yesterday… I was finishing my final for my Editing and Publishing class when I dashed to the bathroom before printing it to submit. Mind you, this is 30 minutes before it’s due. When I got back, there was a little kid on my computer, and this was where my project used to be: ￼

He’d already clicked save. I tried to undo. No dice. By that point, I’d been awake since 10 AM Thursday.

I told her she absolutely had to email my professor to tell her what happened. At first, she refused, saying it wasn’t that big of a deal, her son was only trying to do something nice, and sorry that inconvenienced me, etc. I told her that it *was* that big of a deal, and she rolled her eyes and agreed to do it. A screen shot of her email is posted above.

I literally could not believe what I was reading. The “lol” was the cherry on top of that shit sundae. I posted it on Facebook, ranting about this woman’s “fuck trophy” (the profane name I call unremarkable children who do terrible things and are held up by their parents as just such wittle pwecious twophies). The 50+ comments from my friends on Facebook made my day. A sampling: ￼

I made one of the comments into a PSA: ￼

Luckily, my professor has a soul. If my professor hadn’t had said soul, I’d be putting Kathy’s last name and email on this post.

Here’s the gist of why I’m posting this: I don’t care if you bring your kid to the main university library, even during finals week. I don’t really care much for children, but I will tolerate them. But first, teach them basic manners and not to touch other people’s shit.

Before this, I saw a parent who was doing it right. He was clearly engrossed in what looked like engineering homework, and his son was sitting next to him drawing. His son said loudly, “Hey DAD—” and before he could continue, his dad shushed him and said, “Library voice, remember? There’s a lot of people working on homework. Now what do you need?”

Folks like Kathy, you’re doing it wrong.