Laura prompted me to write this blog. I agree. It's interesting to hear personal stories and oral histories. As I read others relating their short anecdotes, I became painfully aware of just how abnormal most of the stories I could share are... But I won't be afraid to share my abnormal ones because they're the only stories I have to share.
The clichéd formulaic answer repeated ad nauseum to the question about whether or not one has any regrets that one doesn't regret anything because one's experiences made them who they are has always bothered me. While I reluctantly agree with hesitation, I think such statements rob the power of the past to teach.
Well, I have regrets. The story I'll relate here is about regret that I'll go to my grave lamenting.
I suppose I wanted to pick a story that taught me a lesson, and one I've never forgotten and am unwilling to ever forget.
First, the back story...
ANECDOTE 1: Explaining the Doctor
As many of you know, my cousin and I were born nine days apart. He was supposed to be the first grandchild, but while my mother was in Cheyenne testifying before the DEA in a futile attempt to elicit cooperation from the feds in trying to get my kidnapped cousins back from Colombia and Jaime Cordoba, an independent competitor of the Cali cartel (we could call them the Bogotá cartel). That's another tale for another day, and one I actually hope to write a book about one day should my family permit me to do the oral histories and write.
I think it originates with my mom and her sisters (my grandfather had four daughters in the attempt to have a son to carry on the family name which died with him and his childless nephew) and their competition in a home in which they were raised with fairly stoic and unaffectionate parents, but my mom and her sisters are and always have been hypercompetitive. When I have a significant other, I always have to warn that board games are blood sport in my family and that nobody is a good sport about it either.
In any event, my mother and my cousin Shane's mother decided somewhat subconsciously that it would be wise to start a cousin-rivalry (lacking siblings) between my cousin and I. Whose child was the strongest? The smartest? The best looking? Who could buy their child the bigger, better toy at our birthday-time (which was sometimes shared)? Whose child reached the developmental milestones first?
The tale told by silent 8 mm home video from the late 1970s tells the tale in moving pictures. Age 3 or 4. Shane's birthday party (a separate one from my own this year). I'm the happy giggly child who is getting all of the attention from everyone, including his own parents. He's the crying child in the corner who always is crying. I was the stronger child. I was the smarter child. And I was walking and potty trained by age one and the definition of an overachiever as such... I was a preemie (born six weeks premature; 4 lbs., 11 oz.), so I did have a lot to make up for after the incubator. I was the favored child and grandchild; no doubt about it.
Needless to say, my cousin grew up with a visceral and mortal hatred of me. I can’t say that I blame him.
Now, when it comes to the 'ideal' American aesthetic, most of us prefer blonde hair, blue eyes, symmetry, and slimness as generalizations. Much research has been done here to explain aesthetics in terms of evolutionary biology and before I digress on a discursive lecture about the problematic nature of ideas of 'beauty' and 'ugliness' (it is an error to think just because one person finds one attractive, others will, for instance; beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder so when we speak about the 'ideal' aesthetic, we're basically talking about the 'mean' preference only), I ought just say that I speak of this 'ideal' tongue-in-cheek. In any event, one study that I need to find the official reference to that I know has been reproduced involves kindergarteners. Evolutionary psychologists will expose one group of kindergarteners to a highly qualified teacher with a master's degree and years of experience while they expose the second group to a person they pulled off of the street with no formal education that happens to conform better to that 'ideal' aesthetic. Kindergarteners will consistently rank the 'better looking' teacher as the better teacher, irrespective of what assessment scores reveal about what students have actually learned and who is, in all actuality, the better teacher.
Well, my cousin skipped the Finnish genes and got his father's voracious metabolism. While I wasn't obese, I was husky growing up. He also got blonde hair and blue eyes. Go figure. HE was the boy all of the girls wanted to kiss when we played kiss chase on the playground in kindergarten and the first grade. Naturally, all of the boys hated him but also wanted to be his best friend. He became the most popular kid in my grade, and eventually in our elementary school. I'm sure you've predicted the outcome, non?
Of course he used his social power to make my life a living hell. I did have one friend in kindergarten from whom I was separated because our teacher told our moms we talked too much, but thanks to my cousin, I didn't have another single solitary lasting friend (there was Steve in the second grade for a month or two, but his parents moved; then there was Javier but his father was abusive and he was placed in foster care) until really the fifth grade. A few folks were friendly with me (thank you), but, mostly, nobody wanted to be my friend courtesy of my cousin Shane. And the irony is that the truly obese kids made fun of me for being fat. The glasses kids, the short kids, the poor hygiene kids, the poor kids, well, I suppose they were just glad it was someone else for a change. And there was no one lower on the pecking order, so I got it from everyone. My favorite taunts were Terrible Tits Thompson and Two Ton Tub of Lard.
I would complain to playground monitors, teachers, and principals, but was told that I'd better "get a thicker skin," because if they did anything, "it would just make it harder on me." My favorite childhood memory was going into the lunch room. Daily, I had learned my role was to sit at the least occupied table at the least occupied end of that table. When I would move toward that table, wherever it was, everyone without exception would get up and move to a different table. Daily, then, as if on cue, about half of the kids in the lunch room would find endless glee in acting as an earthquake had hit when I went to take a seat. Again, this was so ironic to me because I was hardly obese, and the truly obese kids were never made fun of for being fat. I'm sure they supped at the sublime table of my ridicule silently aware that I was nowhere near as fat as they.
And this is where I develop my overly and painfully cerebral identity and personality. Unlike most normal children, my joy in going to school was going into the library early to read books about the paranormal. Think male version of Mathilde without magical powers. And where my peers had stolen from me my dignity with words of verbal rape, the one thing I could feel good about myself was my intellect. Where others struggled in school, I excelled. I was the kid in the back of the class going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh! Pick me, pick me," because I always knew the answer. So, it was like, okay, so I'm fat and ugly and nobody wants me or likes me, but I'm smarter than you and I'm going to make sure you know it. I remember my sixth grade teacher teaching me how to finally fight back with words like, "You're just an obsequious sycophant with hanging participles." And so began the self-fulfilling prophecy of my social isolation.
Every poor decision I have made in my life is informed by a low self esteem and the basic human need to be loved and accepted and to belong--from smoking to the lovely choices I've made in romantic partners.
So my rambling point here is that I, of all people, should know how words can destroy someone.
Fast forward.
ANECDOTE TWO: THE KING OF HYPOCRISY
One day in the eighth grade, walking home from school toward Highland Park Cemetary, I was happy to see my friends. They were smoking cigarettes and I was about to light up too and to offer my mother's stolen cigarettes to my friends as the price of our friendship, but today from a distance, I could tell something was going on... I realize today we were America's slumdogs. They were in a circle around something. Thinking it was a fight, I picked up speed so I could try to put a stop to it. As I got closer, I realized it was a person.
As I got even closer, I recognized the person. It was Reeka. Nobody liked Reeka. She'd spontaneously urinate herself in the middle of class, and I think that was the primary basis of people's hatred of her. I remember people fighting over not sitting in the desk she'd peed earlier that day in Ms. Kaiser's classroom. The next year, she got caught with David outside of Ms. Stafford's room having sex.
As I came in proximity, I noticed that my friends were violently ripping magazines from her arms that were preciously clutching them as if they were some priceless treasure. They were spitting on her. The things they said to her were so vile that I cannot now for the life of me remember a single one. And for once in my life, I was just glad it wasn't me. I did something that I will go to my grave regretting. I joined them. I called her a loser. I told her that nobody liked her and that noboy wanted her. The only redeeming thing I saw from myself that afternoon is that I told my friends she had enough and to leave her alone. They did.
When I got home, I went to my room and cried and cried and cried for the words that left my mouth. I had to go and confess to my mother, a teacher at the very school both Reeka and I attended. I don't think I've ever seen my mother look more disappointed. I started crying again, and my mother made me promise to never tell anyone (sorry mom, I've got a big mouth) as she was breaking confidentiality by telling me, but she told me that the reason Reeka urinated herself in class is that she was repeatedly raped for years by her father. And those magazines she clutched like a treasure? Well, her family was too poor to afford any books growing up and she was learning how to read in junior high and Ms. Kaiser gave those magazines to her (I'm crying now; Reeka, I'm so sorry) so she could practice learning how to read.
I will never, ever forgive myself for what I did. As a young adult, the heavens gave me the opportunity to apologize. I ran into Reeka scheduling a child development screening for my son. In near tears, I had to apologize profusely to her.
I use this story to teach my kids why ridiculing, even in a joking way, is not acceptable in my classroom. What if my words were the last she needed to hear to end herself?
Americans have a lot of apologizing to do. And the sick and sad thing is most of the people who have apologizing they need to do are oblivious...
Klebold and Harris... "Where were their parents?!?" the sickening meme went... Excuse me, but where were the parents of the children who ridiculed them their entire lives and why can't they take any of the responsibility for raising such thoroughly heartless children? I'm not saying their actions were justified. To the contrary. But there was such an opportunity there to talk about something we as a culture have normalized as a "fact of life" or "rite of passage" that was squandered playing the blame game. I always like to remember that when one points one's finger, three of one's fingers point squarely back at the one doing the pointing.
The clichéd formulaic answer repeated ad nauseum to the question about whether or not one has any regrets that one doesn't regret anything because one's experiences made them who they are has always bothered me. While I reluctantly agree with hesitation, I think such statements rob the power of the past to teach.
Well, I have regrets. The story I'll relate here is about regret that I'll go to my grave lamenting.
I suppose I wanted to pick a story that taught me a lesson, and one I've never forgotten and am unwilling to ever forget.
First, the back story...
ANECDOTE 1: Explaining the Doctor
As many of you know, my cousin and I were born nine days apart. He was supposed to be the first grandchild, but while my mother was in Cheyenne testifying before the DEA in a futile attempt to elicit cooperation from the feds in trying to get my kidnapped cousins back from Colombia and Jaime Cordoba, an independent competitor of the Cali cartel (we could call them the Bogotá cartel). That's another tale for another day, and one I actually hope to write a book about one day should my family permit me to do the oral histories and write.
I think it originates with my mom and her sisters (my grandfather had four daughters in the attempt to have a son to carry on the family name which died with him and his childless nephew) and their competition in a home in which they were raised with fairly stoic and unaffectionate parents, but my mom and her sisters are and always have been hypercompetitive. When I have a significant other, I always have to warn that board games are blood sport in my family and that nobody is a good sport about it either.
In any event, my mother and my cousin Shane's mother decided somewhat subconsciously that it would be wise to start a cousin-rivalry (lacking siblings) between my cousin and I. Whose child was the strongest? The smartest? The best looking? Who could buy their child the bigger, better toy at our birthday-time (which was sometimes shared)? Whose child reached the developmental milestones first?
The tale told by silent 8 mm home video from the late 1970s tells the tale in moving pictures. Age 3 or 4. Shane's birthday party (a separate one from my own this year). I'm the happy giggly child who is getting all of the attention from everyone, including his own parents. He's the crying child in the corner who always is crying. I was the stronger child. I was the smarter child. And I was walking and potty trained by age one and the definition of an overachiever as such... I was a preemie (born six weeks premature; 4 lbs., 11 oz.), so I did have a lot to make up for after the incubator. I was the favored child and grandchild; no doubt about it.
Needless to say, my cousin grew up with a visceral and mortal hatred of me. I can’t say that I blame him.
Now, when it comes to the 'ideal' American aesthetic, most of us prefer blonde hair, blue eyes, symmetry, and slimness as generalizations. Much research has been done here to explain aesthetics in terms of evolutionary biology and before I digress on a discursive lecture about the problematic nature of ideas of 'beauty' and 'ugliness' (it is an error to think just because one person finds one attractive, others will, for instance; beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder so when we speak about the 'ideal' aesthetic, we're basically talking about the 'mean' preference only), I ought just say that I speak of this 'ideal' tongue-in-cheek. In any event, one study that I need to find the official reference to that I know has been reproduced involves kindergarteners. Evolutionary psychologists will expose one group of kindergarteners to a highly qualified teacher with a master's degree and years of experience while they expose the second group to a person they pulled off of the street with no formal education that happens to conform better to that 'ideal' aesthetic. Kindergarteners will consistently rank the 'better looking' teacher as the better teacher, irrespective of what assessment scores reveal about what students have actually learned and who is, in all actuality, the better teacher.
Well, my cousin skipped the Finnish genes and got his father's voracious metabolism. While I wasn't obese, I was husky growing up. He also got blonde hair and blue eyes. Go figure. HE was the boy all of the girls wanted to kiss when we played kiss chase on the playground in kindergarten and the first grade. Naturally, all of the boys hated him but also wanted to be his best friend. He became the most popular kid in my grade, and eventually in our elementary school. I'm sure you've predicted the outcome, non?
Of course he used his social power to make my life a living hell. I did have one friend in kindergarten from whom I was separated because our teacher told our moms we talked too much, but thanks to my cousin, I didn't have another single solitary lasting friend (there was Steve in the second grade for a month or two, but his parents moved; then there was Javier but his father was abusive and he was placed in foster care) until really the fifth grade. A few folks were friendly with me (thank you), but, mostly, nobody wanted to be my friend courtesy of my cousin Shane. And the irony is that the truly obese kids made fun of me for being fat. The glasses kids, the short kids, the poor hygiene kids, the poor kids, well, I suppose they were just glad it was someone else for a change. And there was no one lower on the pecking order, so I got it from everyone. My favorite taunts were Terrible Tits Thompson and Two Ton Tub of Lard.
I would complain to playground monitors, teachers, and principals, but was told that I'd better "get a thicker skin," because if they did anything, "it would just make it harder on me." My favorite childhood memory was going into the lunch room. Daily, I had learned my role was to sit at the least occupied table at the least occupied end of that table. When I would move toward that table, wherever it was, everyone without exception would get up and move to a different table. Daily, then, as if on cue, about half of the kids in the lunch room would find endless glee in acting as an earthquake had hit when I went to take a seat. Again, this was so ironic to me because I was hardly obese, and the truly obese kids were never made fun of for being fat. I'm sure they supped at the sublime table of my ridicule silently aware that I was nowhere near as fat as they.
And this is where I develop my overly and painfully cerebral identity and personality. Unlike most normal children, my joy in going to school was going into the library early to read books about the paranormal. Think male version of Mathilde without magical powers. And where my peers had stolen from me my dignity with words of verbal rape, the one thing I could feel good about myself was my intellect. Where others struggled in school, I excelled. I was the kid in the back of the class going, "Ooh, ooh, ooh! Pick me, pick me," because I always knew the answer. So, it was like, okay, so I'm fat and ugly and nobody wants me or likes me, but I'm smarter than you and I'm going to make sure you know it. I remember my sixth grade teacher teaching me how to finally fight back with words like, "You're just an obsequious sycophant with hanging participles." And so began the self-fulfilling prophecy of my social isolation.
Every poor decision I have made in my life is informed by a low self esteem and the basic human need to be loved and accepted and to belong--from smoking to the lovely choices I've made in romantic partners.
So my rambling point here is that I, of all people, should know how words can destroy someone.
Fast forward.
ANECDOTE TWO: THE KING OF HYPOCRISY
One day in the eighth grade, walking home from school toward Highland Park Cemetary, I was happy to see my friends. They were smoking cigarettes and I was about to light up too and to offer my mother's stolen cigarettes to my friends as the price of our friendship, but today from a distance, I could tell something was going on... I realize today we were America's slumdogs. They were in a circle around something. Thinking it was a fight, I picked up speed so I could try to put a stop to it. As I got closer, I realized it was a person.
As I got even closer, I recognized the person. It was Reeka. Nobody liked Reeka. She'd spontaneously urinate herself in the middle of class, and I think that was the primary basis of people's hatred of her. I remember people fighting over not sitting in the desk she'd peed earlier that day in Ms. Kaiser's classroom. The next year, she got caught with David outside of Ms. Stafford's room having sex.
As I came in proximity, I noticed that my friends were violently ripping magazines from her arms that were preciously clutching them as if they were some priceless treasure. They were spitting on her. The things they said to her were so vile that I cannot now for the life of me remember a single one. And for once in my life, I was just glad it wasn't me. I did something that I will go to my grave regretting. I joined them. I called her a loser. I told her that nobody liked her and that noboy wanted her. The only redeeming thing I saw from myself that afternoon is that I told my friends she had enough and to leave her alone. They did.
When I got home, I went to my room and cried and cried and cried for the words that left my mouth. I had to go and confess to my mother, a teacher at the very school both Reeka and I attended. I don't think I've ever seen my mother look more disappointed. I started crying again, and my mother made me promise to never tell anyone (sorry mom, I've got a big mouth) as she was breaking confidentiality by telling me, but she told me that the reason Reeka urinated herself in class is that she was repeatedly raped for years by her father. And those magazines she clutched like a treasure? Well, her family was too poor to afford any books growing up and she was learning how to read in junior high and Ms. Kaiser gave those magazines to her (I'm crying now; Reeka, I'm so sorry) so she could practice learning how to read.
I will never, ever forgive myself for what I did. As a young adult, the heavens gave me the opportunity to apologize. I ran into Reeka scheduling a child development screening for my son. In near tears, I had to apologize profusely to her.
I use this story to teach my kids why ridiculing, even in a joking way, is not acceptable in my classroom. What if my words were the last she needed to hear to end herself?
Americans have a lot of apologizing to do. And the sick and sad thing is most of the people who have apologizing they need to do are oblivious...
Klebold and Harris... "Where were their parents?!?" the sickening meme went... Excuse me, but where were the parents of the children who ridiculed them their entire lives and why can't they take any of the responsibility for raising such thoroughly heartless children? I'm not saying their actions were justified. To the contrary. But there was such an opportunity there to talk about something we as a culture have normalized as a "fact of life" or "rite of passage" that was squandered playing the blame game. I always like to remember that when one points one's finger, three of one's fingers point squarely back at the one doing the pointing.
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