the top five reasons why i very nearly punched the lady who led the YA lit. conference i attended yesterday

5. She played Elvis songs during every single break, simply because she spoke for two minutes on a book titled Love Me Tender. Twice, she commented on her own cleverness.

4. She kept referring to any gay, lesbian, or bisexual character as being "transgendered," leading me to think that she either has no idea what it means to be transgendered, or she thinks that anyone who is not straight must not identify with her or her gender. Either way, it was annoyingly ignorant.

3. For six solid hours, she spoke with the very same tone, inflection and crazed sort of enthusiasm that one might expect to hear a kindergarten teacher use when speaking to a room full of five-year-olds. Yet, not a single one of us were five. I know, because I checked.

2. She made me solve puzzles.

1. The resource materials she wrote were filled with some of the most bizarre uses of quotation marks I think I've ever seen. At times, they were rude, as in her description of Todd Strasser's Boot Camp:

This "riveting" novel reveals an inside look into secretive and dangerous real boot camps.

(So maybe it's not so riveting! No need to be a sarcastic jerk about it.)

Other times, they were strangely cryptic, as in her description of Point Blank: A Graphic Novel:

Alex is back in class after two weeks of the "flu" until his services are needed again - this time to infiltrate a private boys' "finishing" school.

(Wait. He didn't really have the flu? Then what was it? Something embarrassing, perhaps? Explosive diarrhea? Gonorrhea? Getting that third nipple removed?? And if it wasn't a finishing school, then what was it? A clown school? A Japanese pick-up school? A terrorist school?? Whatever are you hiding, Alex?!?

And occasionally, they were just plain odd, as in her blurb on How to Be Bad:

On a weekend roundtrip, three high school girls experience "broken hearts," "tested friendships," and a "hot stranger."

(So, if their hearts weren't really broken, the friendships never tested and the hot strangers merely ugly people they already knew, then what's the point? Sounds like a boring trip, ladies.)

And yet, I only imagined myself punching her in the face. Somebody get this girl a cookie!