Apparently, you can prove or disprove someone's homosexuality and/or mental disability by winning a fistfight in a public school restroom. Not being a higher order "male" creature, I lack understanding of these matters. The vice-principal at G's school explained that this fight is probably resolved, as now the parties involved have come to an understanding.
I was very tempted to ask about what this understanding entailed. I kinda doubt that any homosexual out there in the world fully realized his gayness after getting pummelled in the restroom ("Yeah, now I realize that I'm gay! This bruise proves it! I'm a sissy because I lost!"). Sighhh.. I don't get it. The VP almost sounds as though he feels that now that the simmering hate has come to blows, these young men can back off and see how silly the verbal fights were in the first place. And the boys don't even remember what the original disagreement was about.
Um, so why were they calling each other names all year on the bus, and why did they slug each other today??? Ok, not getting it here. So not getting it.
I was also tempted to ask the fellow to put G on the phone so I could ask him what big thing he just proved, but I didn't. I was also tempted to ask why bunches of boys would be waiting for this fight to happen in the restroom (it was PRE-SCHEDULED, just like the big matches!!) and didn't tell staff until about the third round. Ding-ding.
Wouldn't you think the spectators who did nothing deserve some sort of punishment as well? Oh, no, I'm not saying my child shouldn't be in trouble. Nope. Just that there's enough yuck to go around here.
Ok, hilarious post here about raising boys and how we moms get a little overprotective. Excerpt: "While I am on the subject of boys and physical interactions, I may as well go ahead and alienate the rest of you by telling you that when I see little boys playing with their toy guns and I hear mothers say, 'WE DON'T POINT GUNS AT PEOPLE! NEVER POINT GUNS AT PEOPLE!' I want to add the disclaimer, 'except in instances where Somali pirates are holding an innocent captain of a U.S. vessel hostage or a mad gunman has commandeered an Amish school house. In that case, please, do point guns at people and hit your target with accuracy. That is the kind of gun control I can stand behind.'"
Well, here's hoping for a peaceful weekend to you all. Will work on cultivating a peaceful attitude within myself (help me, God!) before the older children arrive home from school.
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Look Out, Dad!!
My father is the purple dot above the blue weather station. He's juuust outside Milton's evacuation zone. Well! My brother and I jus...
I am sorry to hear that it happened again. Is is the same boy that gave him a hard time before?
ReplyDeletePoor G! High school is hard enough without all this unnecessary stuff.
At least you guys take action and make him see what he did. ZK'family has never done that and now another child was expelled from her THIRD high school and they say she was set up and would never do the things they accuse her of. Whatever?!?!
MrsC: I just had to laugh. Who knows what goes on in a male mind? Um, yeah, so I hit him & that proves I'm not gay because we all know gay people are sissies. And they're in public school where I can probably assume they've seem the mardi parade where the guys get round in their leather & studs. Nope, I do not get it but I get that males do this stuff & they don't get that we don't get it. I hope you & God managed an arrangement before your boys got home from school. The stress would do me in.
ReplyDeleteZimms, I'm telling you, it's something we're TRYING to instill in G. Really, really hard. It's very difficult to see my son make these same mistakes over and over.
ReplyDeleteYES
It was the same boy. But no one knows at the school that he didn't just hit a wall because he was angry... if they did, he would have some severe consequences and probably have to be educated with some children I don't specially want him near.
Not that other people want their kid near mine specially much when he's angry.
It's all very hard, I tell you. I am not going to tell the school and give them ammo to use against my son.
Ganeida, it IS public school, but you have to understand that we're out here in Missouri. God's country. The children, at least, are not mostly parading about with the pink triangle and rainbow brigade. *Most* of that stuff comes from teachers and staff, but *most* of the kids aren't buying it, and "gay" is a pretty bad insult 'round these parts.
I will say, though, that it bothers me that G lets himself get so worked up over that insult, though. It gives this other child a power he should not have.
YES, explained that yet again.
Now G says that he is "friends" with this kid. Um, I'm reluctant to throw the happy party and invite him over, though...
MrsC: I hear about the *bible belt* but you know, we've nothing like that out here & I guess I don't really get that either. We seem to be a little more laid back about our religion...or something.
ReplyDeleteMan I sympathise with these outbursts. Been there, done that; spent 1/2 my life at the school dealing with the people who had issues with my kid's issues. Prayers your way.
Having made a post just now on a similar subject, then coming here to read your post, I really learned something reading the comments.
ReplyDeleteAt our school, we try to teach the kids NOT to hit back, but to tell the teacher and let the teacher resolve it. Among some boys there seems to be reistance to this. Now I finally understand where it is coming from. By hitting back they are making sure they are not viewed by others as being a "sissy" or being "gay."
Now that I understand where this is coming from, I'll have to discuss it all with some male teachers at school and see what they think about it.
Eileen
Dedicated Elementary Teacher Overseas
elementaryteacher.wordpress.com
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ReplyDeleteHey, take it from an unschooling mom whose 13-year-old son now wears a kilt!
ReplyDeleteSchooled (peer-socialized) boys are not a problem any of us will change or resolve, ever. So I see our parenting job as figuring out REALISTICALLY how to help our own children navigate through such cultural waters. If we don't send them to school, we still have that same job but maybe it's a little easier to do well . . .
OTOH, the very churchy next-door neighbors had an obnoxious boy visiting last Wednesday, who interrupted Young Son playing "Amazing Grace" on the pipes outside at sunset to demand, "Do you believe in God??" (A few minutes later he stopped my husband in the driveway coming home, got him to roll down the window, and challenged him with the same question, as if them wuz fightin' words. Not a socialization problem I can solve for the guys -- my job is just helping with ideas about how they can handle it!)
Eileen, I see how "tattling" would be against the manly code there, but how to get teachers informed about what's going on, reduce the number of fights and still help these kids save face?
ReplyDeleteWell, when you find the answer to that let me know b/c I sure wish I knew!!
JJ, I don't see anything wrong with wearing a kilt. It's ethnic heritage the same as the sari would be for an Indian woman. Would I send my son on the bus with one on? Depends on how well he can defend himself LOL.
And my, I don't think I'd be a Christian with "witness" like that. Honestly? I wonder if people like that spend as much time in prayer as they do accosting people. I don't object to the question or discussion but wow... it's a step up from the "God hates F*gs" sign people. Ok, two steps up. But only just.
Well, I figure education (not schooling) is the answer to all these problems. Educate ourselves and own boys and hopefully, eventually, other boys generally, about humans! How we work and why we work that way. The kid next door, I immediately assumed, was trying to sort and classify people according to something new he was experiencing. Maybe he'd just been taught about Christians and the lions, and been told there were modern-day persecutors to watch out for? Dunno, but it had that flavor.
ReplyDeleteSo it's not just school socialization or overreacting to a Sunday School lesson that causes boy fights. It's nature too, not just nurture. We have to help boys especially manage their own biology (not talking about sex now, but brains.)
Remember that human brains originally were built to survive in a very simple, tribal existence outside, and to label and categorize everything animal, vegetable and mineral (including each other) based on some very primitive clues, like, oh, smell and sound and small differences in appearance? ;-)
The Sunday Times had a story called "Natural Happiness" about this very thing:
"There is a considerable mismatch between the world in which our minds evolved and our current existence. . . our minds were not adapted to cope with a world of billions of people. The life of a modern city dweller, surrounded by strangers, is an evolutionary novelty. . .
This history has left its mark on our minds. Children are irrepressible taxonomizers, placing the world of distinct individuals into categories based on their appearance, their patterns of movement and their presumed deeper natures. . . "
I'm assuming that you are talking about evolution in the classical sense and not as some sort of ontological collective unconscious sort of thing. The second would make for far less intermixing of people of various religions. :]
ReplyDeleteIsn't it strange, though, that what would work well in one society socially would be just awful in another? The very thing that would ensure your survival in Pioneer America would probably be the very thing that gets you marked as an uninvited guest to every party.
I think it's good to a point that children can be so rigid about things while they're young. They can at least be taught "no strangers" and have a clue what a "stranger" is.
I don't buy Oprah's philosophy but once she was talking with guests who had been raped and many of them said, I just didn't follow my GUT because I didn't want to be impolite... and it put them into unsafe scenarios.
Hmm. It could be we teach our children too well, sometimes, too...