When one of my besties dropped her Grade 1 age son off at school Wednesday with his pink T-shirt on, two boys sitting near him sneered made some snide comment about it, and she watched him shrink under the intangible weight that awful people put on decent people.
She ignored the boys and told their teacher, quietly on her way out the door, what happened. She was quite confident it would be dealt with appropriately.
You know, kids “tease,” said one of her Facebook friends, weighing in on the matter.
Not long after that story was brought to my attention, one of my co-workers had another anti-bully shirt story to tell. He went off to the mall yesterday in his pink top and had someone yell “fag” at him as he was walking by. A knuckle dragging adult, who likely liked to “tease” strangers when he was a child.
Both stories left a bad taste in my mouth, but perhaps more importantly reinforced my decision to never have my child engage in anything that encourages thoughtless compliance.
Beyond the waste/it-is-just-marketing/how-many-dollars-go-to-charity issues that spring from pink-everything, it’s my humble opinion that whenever everyone gets behind a photo-op-your-social-ills-away model, the battle has been lost.
And in this case, it really misses the point of what the two kids who started the movement were doing. They were doing something truly special and unique. Look up the origins of pink shirt day if you’re not familiar and think about what it took for them to do what they did.
From my view it can be summed up as independence, confidence and creative thought. Things that are in short supply these days, in large part because it’s easier to maintain compliance than it is to manage confidence.
There are after all, social imperatives at play.
When I was a teacher overseas, I remember being shocked by the sight of social hierarchies repeatedly taking shape before my eyes—it was oftentimes all a bit too Lord of the Flies for my liking.
When I was a child, which was much longer, I remember thinking an awful lot about it how to navigate a new social environment, and avoid the pitfalls of those naturally evolving social hierarchies.
If there’s anything a kid who had to move every few years knows, it’s that in the first week of school they will act as a beacon to two types of people— the loneliest and the meanest.
The loneliest, because a fresh face means a fresh start. Who knows what their problems to that point have been, but certainly not the new kid. So, understandably, they want to make friends.
The meanest, because there is something innately awful about humanity and those who have found a small amount of power always want to protect it.
The latter, of course, are who we now refer to as bullies. And, while I was blessed to not be bullied, as we moved from town to town, I like everyone else have been grazed by encounters with their kind. Encounters that my big mouth and stubborn disposition often helped with.
Regardless, the best way to deal with these human aberrations is to not think like a pod person.
Independent thought and confidence are so important in every circumstance of every day, and our differences should always be celebrated.
But, above all else, young people need to understand the benefits of good, fair and kind behaviour and to be vigilant in protecting that for both themselves and others.
I believe that the number of good people out there far outweigh the number of nasty ones. I believe that the nasty ones probably just have emotional problems that they need to work out on their own time.
I believe that parents, teachers and everyone else need to talk about the things that fuel confidence, independence, free thought and kindness every day. Every. Day.Those lessons will last forever, and won’t clog a landfill.
Finally, I also believe that getting everyone together for a group chat wearing the same outfit for one day of the year does nothing to encourage those attributes.
