My husband recently told me I was dooming my son to be an outcast even before he started school.
“He’s a vegetarian, and he doesn’t play hockey,” he exclaimed, noting that my son’s friends had already been teasing him for this choice. “And we live in St. Paul. This is a problem.” (He could have also mentioned that our son has two sisters and often asks to have his nails painted like them, and I oblige). I pointed out that his school and many others have a Pink Shirt day in February, which began to encourage kids not to bully one another for personal choices.
Our daughter has also been having a little trouble with a few of the girls in her classes, a few of whom have decided she shouldn’t be allowed to play with the group, apparently telling her, “You’re different from us.”
“But what does that mean?” I asked, perplexed. But she didn’t know herself.
For me, I knew exactly how different I was from the other kids growing up, and wished more than once I could blend in. Instead, my father would have me and my friends following him along the neighbourhood, singing Indian religious songs, and I would take chickpea curry sandwiches to school, always ready to insist it was just a regular PB&J if anyone called me out on it. As different as I felt though, my classmates never mocked me or went out of their way to hurt me.
Then I moved to a new school in my Grade 7 year, which I have learned now is horrible almost universally for everyone. The particular mix of students in this class was downright toxic, a shark tank where almost no one came out unscathed. The two years I spent there were the worst of my life, better off not remembered.
But there is one episode I will never forget, that reminds me they could hurt me, they could make me wish I was dead, but that they never broke me.
As bullies are wont to do, this group of girls cut one of their friends loose and made her their new victim of teasing. When it came time to partner up for tennis and she was left on her own, I looked at her with mixed feelings. She had been one of my torturers, and now she was on the receiving end of what she had dished out.
I’ve never been one to hold a grudge, so I told her I would partner with her. I remember the girls teasing her as they walked by and how they encouraged me to ditch her too. But I took one look at that girl’s face, once so proud, smiling and vicious, and now so beaten and dejected, and decided I would never be like them – I wouldn’t do to her what they had done to me. We went back to playing tennis and that was the end of that.
As different as my family was growing up, I always had, and still have, respect for my parents’ morals. They taught me to accept all people, and as awkward as it sometimes was, they forced me to accept myself, chickpea curry sandwiches and all.
I think back to that day in school, and feel proud of my awkward adolescent self for doing the right thing, rather than simply following the crowd like a mindless sheep.
I want to tell my kids: It doesn’t matter what you choose. I’ll stand by you. But be who you are and do what you want, no matter what anyone else says, because it’s not important what they think. Their taunts will fade with time. What’s most important is that when you look back that you can live with the choices you made - because that lasts forever.
