as you may know, i don't have a computer of my own. hence, i do my best at mooching off the public library's computers. that's usually okay enough - i sit upstairs in a spot with about 9 computers and often enough it's only me using one at the time. nice and peaceful.

however, today a bunch of mid-teen boys had managed to get a key to a computer, and were surfing away next to me, trying to find as many strange porn sites as possible. i suppose i should object, or something, but frankly, it provided me a lot of entertainment to hear sudden outbursts of amazed "how'd they manage to do that??"

in the midst of one of those outburst, i suddenly hear the elderly man across who is always making ART (tm) using photoshop get up from his chair and bark at the boys next to me: "okay that's enough, you're in sweden now, you have to adjust and speak swedish. stop speaking yugoslavian up here or get out, you hear?"

*insert jennie's jaw drop*

yes, the kids were all of slavic origin, and yes, they spoke a mix of swedish and serbo-croatic, but hello?? since when was there a law that you must only speak swedish in a swedish public library?

soon enough, all were engaged in something that could only be described as an argument that totally blew my mind. apparently, the man wanted them to be more quiet, and instead of simply asking them to, or complain to a library employee, he decided that to get them to shut them up, he should tell them that they should be quiet because a) they weren't speaking swedish and b) apparently, they had only come to sweden to leech off swedish people's hard-earned tax money.

somewhere in the midst of processing that this seemingly nice elderly man in fact was capable of sudden racist outbursts against teenage boys who had done nothing but been a bit loud i decided i just couldn't sit there and stare.

so i opened my mouth and hammered back.

the look on that old bat's face was priceless. the boys next to me soon realized it was in their favour to simply shut up and let me take over. and man, it felt good.

the end of it definately came when he tried to claim that he had some validity to the crap he was saying because he'd been to yugoslavia 7 times in his life, and i should butt out because i didn't know anything about the subject.

at which point i informed him that i am half-bosnian, and that i took great offense that he in any way were trying to come off as if he actually had a right to insult people because he'd "visited their country seven times" and that he's damn old enough to know better.

and then we all just shut up. but maaaan. it felt... good.