It's a new school year which means dealing with early mornings, school lunches, cranky kids and of course other peoples crappy children. When I was in elementary school life sucked. Picture it: late 80's and I'm 5'7 in the 4th grade. I weighed about 40lbs and wore gigantic glasses. I have told this tale before so I won't recycle it, but lets just say I had my fair share of bullies. Now when I was a kid there were no television commercials narrated by the cast of Glee discussing how it'll get better. I was given two choices: attempt to become completely invisible (which at my height, which included an afro- WAS IMPOSSIBLE) or become a complete jerk myself. I chose jerk but waited until we moved to southern Utah in 1991 to debut my new persona. Now, I wasn't mean to other dorks, only other jerks. I became a "right fighter" as my mother called it; a Robin Hood for losers if you will. I even let a jerky Utah History teacher named Mr. Cannon have it. I was unstoppable. Unfortunately, I've recently realized that I'm not a mean person deep down I'm just really freaking bitter.
Long story short, my bullies won. Those kids (I remember the names of the truly heinous ones) changed my story. They took a girl that just desperately wanted to be normal and made her a hateful bully. I didn't think I was a bully because I was giving other bullies what they deserved, but I was one of them. My husband and I love the show Dexter (the serial killer that only kills killers) and watching him get justice from truly unforgivable people makes us happy--but he's still murdering other people. Now, I never murdered anyone but I did break up a perfectly happy snotty high school couple (with some pretty horrible lies) because I thought they deserved to be alone. I am not proud of any of the things I did or said, but I can't take any of them back.
I was mean to a person that didn't deserve it once. A girl was sitting at our schools clock tower eating her lunch and I suddenly had an overwhelming need to throw a crumpled chip bag at her head, and I did. The look on her face is still stuck in my head now 15 years later and I immediately regretted that decision. I apologized and told her I was aiming at the trash but she knew I was full of it and so did my friends.
The reason I'm reliving all my past crimes is because two of my kids are in school now and in only a month we've had 2 issues with other peoples crappy children.
My kindergartner had a boy try to look at her butt. My wonderful middle child is no wallflower. She put that kid in his place (it may have been quite ugly) and rightly so. However my son isn't as aggressive as his younger sister and reacted quite the opposite yesterday when he was hit in the face. It wasn't a beat down but my son and his friend didn't want to retaliate for 2 reasons. They didn't want to get in trouble and they aren't butt heads.
My main issue is when is enough enough? Do we need to quit turning our kids into complete sissies and tell them to man up and handle it themselves? Should we try my mothers old approach and ignore them assuming that they're "just jealous" of us? While, I apologize to my beloved mother, her way got me jumped on the walk home from school and a skateboard broke over my head on a lovely winter afternoon. I have caught myself telling my kids to turn the other cheek and ignore the mean crowd, but is that good advice? The turning point in my life came when my dad gave me completely opposite advice from his wife: "don't start a fight EVER, but always finish them". This advice turned sour when I found myself at age 17 begging a girl that absolutely hated me (a feeling I shared) to punch me because I could "start" the fight. That way didn't work either.
I guess this particular blog is to get parents thinking. Do we need to quit babying our babies or be proud of them for not stooping. I obviously do not have an answer. I guess I kind of hoped the answer would plop into my brain while I typed.
I'll leave you with this: When I was a kid I used to golf. I played a tournament once with 2 evil girls in my foursome. They cheated and said the most horrific things to the other dorky golfer and myself. At the end of the day we dorks hung our heads as we did nothing about the atrocities of the game. Years later I heard one of the evil girls (also named Sara but without the H which apparently means something to me) got a full ride golf scholarship to BYU (was NOT jealous of the school) but lost it when her school discovered she was quite a tramp (BYU has a morality clause that I just love lol) and she never went to college, ended up with a couple kids, no husband and a crap job. Moral of the story: while crappy people sometimes do win in life--it's extra wonderful when they fail miserably. So maybe our nice kids have hope.
Oh crap: darn it I'm still a bully. Lesson learned.
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