So, A good thing:

The other day at the bodega, a new kid, young guy, comes up to me, slightly raspy voice that maybe hasn't quite finished off from puberty, "Hey, uh, I forgot my locker code. Can you open it for me?"

Lockers at work have a keypad. You use a new locker everyday and create a code everyday. We have a little doo-hickey that'll pop the lock electronically when the kids forget their code (or which locker they're in).

We go down there, start poppin' lockers, pop a few and no, no, nope, no, that's it! I look inside and there's a book. A big-ass book, the book is Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". "Hey, thanks!" And he, happily, lopes into the break room.

I am suspicious. I am intrigued.

Later that evening, I'm letting people out and the book kid comes along and I'm, like, "Soooo. . . Dostoevsky. . . ?" "Yeah, well, I read "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov" and I really liked them, so I'm reading this one."

Now I know I'm in the presence of a beautiful unicorn and, after recommending "The Master and Margarita", for lack of anything better to say to a unicorn, I say, "So, you're a reader."

"Oh, I just think that literature is the only way, besides travel, to really learn about and empathize with people and cultures you might never meet."
The only rational response was to look around madly for a camera that was obviously secretly filming me to capture my disbelief.

I told him his parents must be pretty proud of him ("Yeah, I think they're happy.") and I told him I'd give him a list of things to read once he was done with his fuckin' Dostoevsky.

"There's a lot of good books out there!", I said. He kind of looked at the floor, shook his head at his little, personal awe and in his sweet, raspy kid-voice said, "Yeah, like, you could live the rest of your life and never read a bad book."
Some of the kids, folks, are alright.