#felt like protective big sister energy watch over me

Today I witnessed the most endearing thing practically ever hold on I gotta tell you.

Background: my city’s library system has a summer reading program, and I’m one of the volunteers to help run it at my local branch. Today I had a shift that I’d taken to fill the sign-up desk for the last few hours of the day because no one else was covering them, so I show up ready to be alone for the next three hours and…there’s someone already sitting behind the desk, the prior two volunteers very quickly explaining how things work and how to sign people up. I have never seen this person before, and she seems overwhelmed by information and is young, and looks a little nervous when she sees me standing there as the prior two volunteers leave, and I’m immediately overcome with such intense big sister energy like oh man I gotta look out for this kid, so I explain that I’m also a volunteer and join her behind the desk and she looks relieved and warms up and we chat for a moment

Now we’re behind the desk like normal and so her mom walks up, introduces herself and asks the girl if she’s all situated and ready, because this girl wasn’t at the orientation and has just showed up without any of the hour of prep all the other volunteers received.

The girl says yes, so her mom very excitedly goes over to get her little brother, whose like 8, and brings him over, this way she can specifically sign up her little brother and mom as the first people she helps. She explained the program, turning to me for help once to make sure she got it right, and got her family signed up. It was so adorable I can’t even explain it

And then the mom started to walk away to hang out in the library before turning back around to say “wait! I need to get a picture of [name’s] first day!] and pulls out a camera, taking a step back so she could take a picture of the two of us (I gave my permission to be in the photo) for this girl’s first day volunteering at the library

So now she’s behind the desk, has had a practice run, and I’m there to help if she forgets anything and we’re volunteering as normal. One of the things the staff does for us is provide a sketchbook and crayons (idk why crayons) to pass the time if we didn’t bring anything or don’t feel like reading at the moment, so the girl starts to mess around with the sketchbook and I’m reading next to her until I notice out of the corner of my eye, she’s written my name on the page.

My hair is dyed bright red, so when her little brother was trying to guess how many pom poms are in the guessing jar, the mom had asked me how I dyed it (Arctic Fox) and so under my name the girl had made a note of the brand, and I’m like oh cool! that way you can take that page of the sketchbook with you and won’t forget! and then because I happened to be paying a little closer attention, I saw when she turned the page this incomplete drawing of a face

as an artist myself I know it’s uncomfortable to have someone watching you so I tried to focus on other things, but the sketchbook is out on the table so I see it from time to time when I look up, and I notice a few minutes later…that she’s drawing me!She’s got the skin tone and my black mask, and then she starts to add my makeup and earrings and that bright red hair I mentioned before. And I’m just sitting here like oh fuck kid I would die for you. She was so sweet she was complaining about the crayons and how she messed up the ears so she turned them into elf ears and once she knew I’d realized she was drawing me she kept turning to look at me like "hmm let me see” to use my real life face as a reference. Like she’d just met me and thought my hair and makeup was cool so she started drawing me

She was only there for an hour, and I helped her mom get everything sorted out to sign up for volunteering hours because the girl is young enough that the normal system doesn’t really work for her and she wasn’t at the orientation, and her mom was so thankful for me just being there so the girl wasn’t at the table all on her own the very first time with such a quick intro from the previous volunteers. Instead she got to see me sign people up and hear the information repeated over and over and do it herself with someone to fall back on in case she forgot something

and she was so anxious about leaving, because it was just going to be me and she thought she had to wait for someone else to get there so I wouldn’t be alone and I was just there like honey I didn’t even think you were going to be here don’t you worry about it at all, I can take care of the desk on my own and then I watched her take another 15 minutes walking around the library before checking out like 10 books and I had this moment of “I used to be you.” Because that’s what I did at her age in the library.

and I might have to specifically sign up for an hour at the desk where she’s signed up just because she was so sweet and nice to be around and I wanna make sure she’s doing alright at the desk like aurhgu

another notable instance was when this person about my age walked up to the desk and we simultaneously complemented each others hair, like just “I love your hair” at the exactsame time, and then we both complemented each other’s makeup

anyway my point is people are incredible and kind and the world deserves kindness and also everyone should go to the library and pick up a book