Category: Uncategorized

Last year a friend from middle school sent me a copy of the end-of-year 8th grade school paper that a handful of friends and I largely wrote.  I was horrified.  Honest to god, I have no idea how the adults in that school administration allowed something so full of meanness to be printed.  And I had written a good third of it.

Reading this Jezebel.com article by a woman who was horribly bullied as a 6th grader, I started looking back and navel gazing.  In light of the media spotlight on bullying after 15-year-old Phoebe Prince ended her life in response to schoolyard treatment that followed her home, I have begun to wonder how I would have fared had my own tormentors had 24 hour access to me via the internet?  Or, how would my victims have fared had I access to the internet back then? 

I recall seeing that paper as a way to get back at the kids who made fun of me, called me Dictionary Breath and Thesaurus Head, and who bullied and threatened me in gym class.  I already had a chip on my shoulder, coming out of the worst year of my entire academic life, running from an all girl school where I had been so bullied that the school counselor suggested I was being driven insane.  My drama teacher agreed.  She said I was likely already insane–creative types usually were.  She actually asked me if I saw spots, and compared me to Sylvia Plath.  What kind of moron compares a 12 year old to Sylvia Plath?  Apparently, I brought a little something extra crazy to the role of Mrs. Lovett.

Then there was the incident.  I walked into music class one day, and headed to a desk.  A binder slammed down on the top of it.  “Saved,” said Tiffany.  I turned to the one beside it.  Another binder slammed down on top of it.  “Saved,” said Mary.  This happened three more times, until I was standing in front of the classroom looking for a seat, feeling a hot panic rising.

At this school I had been spit on, held down on the playground while dirt was poured on my head, refused seating at lunch, and made constant fun of for being new, being middle class (which meant poor to these girls), and for having a strange accent.  It all came to a head right there in the last six weeks of school.

In front of the entire class, I took a deep breath and then shouted at the top of my lungs.  And what do you think I shouted?  Oh, I was such an egghead.  I paraphrased a whole segment from the Merchant of Venice, howling that if I was cut, did I not bleed?!

Then, I ran out of the classroom to a bathroom in the upper school.  I learned three things from that outburst:   If your classmates believe they have actually broken you, they might apologize.  If you hide somewhere that no one can find you, you can’t be comforted (so I switched bathrooms and let two girls find me.)  It is entirely possible to go AWOL from a class without getting into trouble.

You know, I’m still not entirely over that year?  I have frequent occasion to be reminded of one of my main tormentors, and I still want to tell people, “That girl made my life hell!”  But, in the wake of that year and in the rock quarry that was me trying to prove myself in 7th grade, I think I turned just as mean as she was.  If that 8th grade paper is any evidence, I did.

6th grade turned me mean.

Looking back, I can see how vicious I was.  At the time, it felt like survival, all that wild slashing around.  I felt lost and alone, couldn’t make a lasting friendship because I changed schools every year or two, and I was keenly aware of how the new girl is a sitting duck.  After 6th grade, I was determined to get before I was gotten.  I was still a little soft in 7th grade, but a couple of other girls at the new school took care of that.  By high school, I was pretty hard.

I wonder how my life would have been different, if instead of telling me I needed to develop a thicker skin, the school administrators had told my 6th grade peers that they needed to develop a conscience?  Or if their parents had cared?  Or if my parents had taken a more active stand?

I wonder how Phoebe Prince’s life might have been different.

Look, I’ve been bullied, and I’ve been a bully.  Neither is very satisfying, but either could be shut down by firm adult intervention.  If your child is a bully, take care of it.  If your child is being bullied, take action against it–whatever you have to do, short of cutting brake cables.  If you see it happening, stop it.  Children need to be taught compassion and mercy.

No child should ever feel compelled to quote Shylock.

Newsweek brings up an interesting point in an article this week, asking why young voters are lukewarm on abortion rights.  It begins, “How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don’t think abortion rights need defending?”

A few years ago, my ministry coworkers and I would have been rejoicing over that lede.  We would have been delighted that the prayers of the many had so confused the wicked, that the wicked could no longer even see their goal.  The wicked being the immoral pro-choice movement.  It was all about morality and murder, and we were ready with verse and scripture to defend the side of ethics.  There was no gray area.  Abortion was murder.  Period.  If you questioned that, you were morally bankrupt.  No questions allowed.

Where my former evangelical colleagues and I believed we had the market cornered and were happy to talk morality til you were red in the face, Newsweek reminds us that abortion-rights activists have “traditionally hesitated” on the front of discussing the moral complexities of abortion.  Now, activists are realizing that the public discussion has to include conversation about the moral, ethical and emotional complexities of abortion.  Anna Greenburg of NARAL posits, “It’s a morally complex issue that both sides have tried to make black and white,” says Greenberg. “We have to recognize the moral complexity.”

It is complex, and we don’t do ourselves any favors when we refuse to see that there are eight numbers between one and ten, and a whole spectrum of color between black and white.  My own thinking is an excellent example of that rainbow of complexity.

I am pro-choice.

I am also pro-life.

In the past, I have been anti-choice.

I have been sanctimonious, self-righteous, arrogant, and finger pointing–on both sides of the fence.  I have called women selfish, cruel, and told them I thought they were making the worst decisions of their lives, and that they were ruining their lives and the lives of others–on both sides of the fence.  I have been an equal opportunity jackass. 

I have been a Republican about it, defiantly against choice.  I have been a Democrat about it, stridently for choice.  I have been a Libertarian about it, believing that it is every individual state’s right to protect or refuse reproductive rights, and that the federal government has no Constitutional power to address it.  I have been Evangelical about it, demanding that life begins at conception and abortion is murder.  I have been Agnostic about it, snarking that if God knows all, then he knows which fetuses are going to be aborted ahead of time.  I like to think that I am finally being human about it.

I have several friends who have all had to made difficult choices, for different reasons, that led to different decisions.  I believe that every one of those women had the right to make her difficult choice, and that each one’s decision was hers to make.

At this point in my life, I am afraid of losing rights.  I am afraid of losing my reproductive rights, including the right to terminate a pregnancy.  I am a feminist, and I believe in a woman’s right to control her body and what happens to it.  I am a Christian, and I believe a merciful God who forgives, but who also commanded the murder of men, women and innocent children at various points in the Judeo-Christian history.  So what do you do with that?  It is a painful conversation.  It is a wrenching conversation.  Someone always loses in the conversation–no one wins when it comes to abortion.

But along with those women who will choose to use abortion as their only method of birth control, there are women who will choose to have abortions because it is a matter of their life and death, and girls who should be able to choose abortions who have been raped and abused.  See?  It is morally complex.  Do you tell a mother that it is better for her to die and leave her children orphaned, than to abort?  Do you tell a child that she has to carry a baby to term because two wrongs don’t make a right?  Do you tell a junkie to carry her poisoned fetus to term, so it can struggle through life in a vegetative state?  Maybe you do.  But do you deny that it is complex?

I don’t know when life begins.  I have a lot of trouble with that.  I don’t know if it is at conception.  I don’t know if that precious life begins when the first breath is drawn.  All I know for sure is that those of us able to have the conversations are definitely among the living, and we owe each other compassion and respect regardless of where we come down on the issue.

I don’t have any secrets.  Seriously.  I have this overdeveloped sense of guilt and responsibility, and if I’ve done something wrong I end up confessing it to God and everyone else.  I need absolution, and my method of self-flagellation is in confessing myself.  Other things that people would keep secret, I end up thinking are great stories, and I tell them.  Oh, there are things I don’t just talk about on principle of what’s good conversation, but I’m not hiding anything. (Granted, I haven’t done anything that truly requires hiding.  There are no bodies.)

My mother always says that the only way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone at all.  Since this is nigh on impossible for a talker like me, I just don’t keep secrets.  My secrets that is.  I don’t keep my secrets.  I probably won’t keep yours either, but I’ll only tell B and my mother.  They won’t tell anyone else.

Secrets are high pressure.  If you feel the need to press the release valve and share with someone else, it is unfair to expect them not to feel the same pressure and need to share.  So, if you don’t want everyone to know about something, don’t tell anyone.  Especially good news!  Everyone wants to tell good news.

I have managed to keep some pretty big secrets, usually involving an engagement or a great present, then it’s a letdown because I can’t dance around and say, “I knew it all along!”  I get this from my grandmother, by the way.  The only thing she hated worse than having to keep a secret was not being the one to blow the secret to kingdom come.

The weather is wreaking havoc on my internet connection and my plans for the weekend. I think I am equally annoyed. If I can’t get out and do what I had planned, then I should at least be able to play online, right?

It’s been raining at various levels all day, from the light pelting Thor and I took on the way to the grocery store, to the downpour that just forced me to shut the windows. I’m not complaining. It’s Texas, and we’re going to be wishing for more by August.

It is good sleeping weather. So what am I doing still awake? Well, I started watching streaming video and got cut off halfway through the first episode of a season. I have to wait 54 minutes (6 to go!) in order to watch the rest of the show. Once I know how it ends, I’ll go to bed. Hopefully, it will still be raining.