jenett | Why books matter

(or : why I basically adore my job, reason 4378)

So, we're in the middle of parent teacher conferences, so teachers sometimes get breaks in which they don't have much to do for 10 minutes between parents. We've got math and science teachers up in the library.

I'd say one of my favorite math teachers, but actually, I like them all a lot, but someone who's in his early 60s, probably, wanders by my desk. He'd been part of the Laramie Project: 10 Years Later staged reading that our school hosted (as one of two sites in the Twin Cities) on Monday.

His wife asked him on the way home about why he wanted to do this. And he said, "Y'know, I thought about that. Why this time for the first time in 10 years do I have a safe space sign on my door? Why did I want to get up in a public setting and be very clear about being an ally?" (He's straight, but in the course of the conversation mentioned that his best man, lo decades ago, is gay, so this is not a new thing he's just paying attention to now.)

And he said "Once I thought about it, though, I realised - this summer, I read _Middlesex_"(the Jeffrey Eugenides novel with an intersexed protagonist.) and that it got him thinking again about the issues of being GLBTQ, and what that means in society, and how hard it can be on kids who are different in some way, and why it's important to be supportive.

And that, dear readers, is why books matter.