It’s taken me a long time to put this down coherently, but reading in the paper how the other kids picked on the Virginia killer finally gave me the push I needed.
You see, for several years in grade school, I was that kid. The one excluded and sniped at by the popular cliques. The one who found little notes “accidentally” left lying around, with lists of people in various categories, and my name somehow always turned up among the worst.
But let’s be honest about it: I wasn’t blameless. Some of it was my fault, for being smarter and more articulate and absolutely fearless when it came to saying what I thought (OK, tactless in the extreme, sometimes). By the time I hit the sixth grade I was being kept after school every week for something or other, put out in the hall now and again and sometimes sent to the principal’s office for a talking-to, so it wasn’t just the other kids I was way too mouthy to. I would not conform. I wasn’t interested in the kinds of things the popular kids were interested in, so we had little common ground. I’m the only person I know who got kept after school on the last day of school, when everyone else was dismissed after picking up their final report cards and cleaning out their desks.
Some of it, though, was not my fault. My parents were both off in their own little worlds. My life at school was outside their frame of experience, since both of them had gone to upper-crust boarding schools where everything was regimented for them. They had no idea what public school was like and they really weren’t interested in knowing. They didn’t pay attention to the fact that I hit puberty way earlier than my classmates and my clothes didn’t fit right. They didn’t notice that I needed to wear a bra. My mother pooh-poohed the idea that I needed to wear deodorant. So I dressed funny and I smelled. Remarks were made about my personal hygiene. There wasn’t much I could have done about that.
Fortunately, in the summer before I went to junior high, we moved to a different state and I got to start over with a whole new group of kids who hadn’t gotten into the habit of hating me. I told my mom that if she didn’t buy me my own deodorant I’d just use hers every day. She started buying me better clothes. From then on I was adequately popular and a lot of the kids who were “in with the in crowd” were my friends. I’m one of the few people my age who looks back on junior high and high school as being a pretty good time, instead of remembering it all with the tragic angst of having been too hip for the room.
But I never forgot those early years. People who were outcasts in school generally don’t forget it. You wouldn’t think that a sixth-grade kid could inflict lasting damage on another person with the power of a few words, but yes, they can. You wouldn’t think that an ostensibly grown-up person could look back forty years and find un-healed wounds, but yes, they can.
Once when my daughter was in grade school I caught her starting to say to another girl “I’m having a party and you’re not invited.” I smacked her before I realized what I was doing. I think it startled both of us equally. Later on I explained to her that I was that kid who was pointedly not invited and how much it hurt to have people tell me so.
I wish every parent would make a point of telling their kids that contrary to the “sticks and stones” statement, words can always hurt. I wish every parent would make a point of telling their kids that they’re free to think whatever they want to about other kids but they darn well better keep those thoughts to themselves and have the guts to tell other kids to knock it off when they hear it. As the song goes, “Don’t laugh at me, don’t call me names, don’t take your pleasure from my pain.”
Every teacher should be telling every class, “You may think it’s funny or smart to make fun of other kids. We don’t. It won’t be tolerated here.” Whether they follow it up with “Some kids who get picked on grow up to kill other kids, and if that happens in the future to someone you think it’s funny to treat badly now, you’re going to have to take the blame” is up for grabs.
That Virginia killer was mentally ill. He might have gone round the bend and started shooting no matter how he was treated when he was younger, because if his mental illness was long-standing he might well have seen things from a completely warped perspective from an early age and imagined enemies where there were none. But the news reports say that he was mocked and ostracized. Add real persecution to mental illness and you get a bomb waiting to go off.
I grew up in central Virginia. Some of my classmates went to Virginia Tech. I have no doubt some of their kids went there too. I hope none of the victims was related to anyone I know–even if they were the kids who shut me out.
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.
Break on through to the other side
Table of contents for 10 Ways To Take A Stand Against Ignorance
It may seem paradoxical, in light of the previous entry’s suggestion that one may take a stand against ignorance by watching more TV, that today’s suggestion is: Stop relying on radio, television and/or the internet as your primary source for news and current events.
By their very nature, such media can’t provide background, careful analysis or in-depth reporting. There just isn’t time. People get bored. The advertisers won’t go for it. Broadcasters aren’t journalists, they’re entertainers. You know the drill.
But in the end, it’s mostly true. There is no time in a half-hour show to explain the buildup to this or that current event and put things in perspective. A “personality” who does commentary on the news of the day isn’t going to stick around long if he or she doesn’t entertain the audience (usually at the expense of actually informing them). Advertisers have to consider what will sell, and extend or withdraw their support accordingly.
The result is that people who rely on broadcasters to tell them what’s what, are likely going to end up as #1 on YouTube trying to explain why nobody can find anything on a map.
The first and best thing one can do to take a stand against this kind of ignorance is to subscribe to a weekly news magazine called, appropriately, The Week. This is no ordinary news magazine. Its stories are short and well written. But what makes this magazine stand head and shoulders above any other is that its staff incorporates news stories from a huge range of other publications, and in any controversial issue includes multiple voices from all sides. There are also excerpts from newspapers and magazines published around the world, so the reader can see exactly what other people think.  “The Week” doesn’t favor any particular point of view. They do report all sides. There’s no better way to look at the issues and make up your own mind–and learn something in the process.
In addition, if you’re not a regular reader of daily newspapers, now would be a good time to start. Newspapers may report the same stories the TV newscasters do, but a newspaper can give you more. A TV story has to be cut short to fit in the time available. A newspaper can give you what Paul Harvey calls “the rest of the story.” Newspapers are not as free of editorial bias as “The Week,” of course. But they do reflect the sentiments of the communities in which they are based. And, of course, if you disagree with the paper’s point of view, you can always write a letter to the editor and tell them why. There’s not much chance of getting your letter read on a newscast, but if you can write a coherent sentence, you stand a good chance of getting published in the paper.
As for getting information from the internet–well, you can find both the best and the worst here. The ecstasy and the agony of the internet both come from the fact that anybody can post anything they want. You can find information that comes from the most highly respected authorities in any field, and you can find a lot more information from wackos with axes to grind and tinfoil hats.  And it’s all right there at the click of a mouse.  We can easily find ourselves so overloaded with conflicting points of view that we end up knowing no more than when we started out–and being a lot more confused thereby.
Take a stand against ignorance by refusing to accept the sound-bite or the sound-byte version of any story. Get the big picture. You might be astonished by what’s being left out.
Hope you'll recommend my posts via your favorite social media. Just don't copy the material as your own.Hide Sites