That Alex had physical and communication challenges didn't
stop him from asking for a date with Belen.
That she said yes I believe is a testimony to her heart and her
character.
I'm going to call the rest of this my Jane Doe story. Maybe you were never this person. Maybe you were.
I can remember how badly we treated Jane. She wasn't one of the "cool kids"
and, truth be known, was pretty obnoxious.
The kind of person that might get on your nerves quickly.
I can remember never wanting to be seen talking to her
because my buddies might think that I "liked" her. So I shunned her. Ignored her if she tried to talk to me.
Was she that bad? Oh
heavens no.
We had a "fat girl" in our class too. Shunned as though she had a contagious
disease, I can't imagine what life must have been like for her. I do know that we became re-acquainted as
adults and I found her to be engaging, smart, funny, and an all-around decent
person. I think she was still big but
I'm not real sure because I didn't see her that way anymore.
Stuff like this still happens every day. What were we thinking? We weren't bad kids but obviously we could
be cruel.
Bullying is not just physical beatings or even pushing someone down
on the playground. Bullying takes many
faces. Cruelty like this is a form of
bullying.
When you make fun of what someone is wearing, that's a form
of bullying. Did you ever stop to think
that maybe that's all they had? Or that
maybe their parents were unable to make the kind of choices that you think are
fashionable?
Or the way someone looks?
That's bullying too. The kid with
size 14 shoes in the 5th grade and you just think that's the funniest thing
you've seen in a long time? That is the
same kid that will be 6'6" and a basketball star in just a few short
years.
Or the girl that had to have glasses too young and gets
called "Four Eyes" everywhere she goes. Whose nose doesn't seem to fit her
face. She's the one who grows into
those things and is knock-dead gorgeous and believe me, you will wish you had
been nicer to her when you were younger.
I honestly believe that is all about our own
insecurity. We don't know who we are and
are despite desperately searching for that person but in the meantime we
elevate our status (in our own minds) by treating others badly.
There's this one guy that I knew well in college that may
have helped me understand how this is just basically wrong. When a bunch of us guys were hanging out
together, he would pick the one person in the room that he saw as the weakest or
least and make fun of him. What we called "teasing," although
it was something much darker than that.
I was sometimes that person being picked on. It took me many years to forgive him. What he did do was teach me a little about
how to treat people. And what I've
discovered is that if you treat others with respect, if you make yourself blind
to whatever faults they might have, you're going to find some really great
people out there.
People that you have a lot more in common with than you
could ever have dreamed. And that's a
good place to be.
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