Step 1: Apologize

When I was 11 I moved. I don't know how, but in my first 11 years of life I was friends with the cool kids, and obliviously niave...not just niave, obliviously so. I didn't even know I was niave.

So, when I moved to my new town, where there were only 20 other kids in my class I had quite the learning curve, I slowly picked up on things, always too afraid to ask my friends what they meant, but I'm a smart cookie, so caught on to most things eventually.

Sadly, early on, when I first arrived in grade 6 I had very few fiends. I was picked on. I was terrified. I just followed along, and flew under the radar. Anything to avoid attention because attention was negative. That's why, when my classmates bullied a boy in our class I did nothing. I don't remember ever doing anything to him, I don't remember ever talking to him myself. He may have spoken to me once, and I think I wasn't my normal overaccomodating self, maybe rude. I didn't really understand why. My classmates had been bullying this boy for a while. We had to go to group counselling and the police had to talk to a class of 12 years olds about harrassment. Someone stomped on his foot and broke it. Someone stabbed him with a pencil. Someone threatened him with a lighter and bugspray, or some sort of thing that was never really clear. Someone vandalised his locker. He had no friends.


He was called a "fag".

I was afraid and new and all manner of excuses.
I probably laughed a few times when people said something cruel so that I might fit in, or at least not stand out.
I may have been passive, but I feel like I contributed to what is going on now. I don't watch/read/listen to the news, and yet I know that kids across North America are committing suicide because people are bullying them. They are bullied about whatever other people don't like about them. A lot of the kids in the news today were bullied about their sexual preferences. The boy in my class was transferred to a different school because we were intolerable.

Listening to the news, and watching the most recent episode of Glee, has had me thinking for the last few days about the issue. I don't understand why the people who are considered "straight" feel so entitled to abuse others. Schools and religious groups make a huge deal about who can say about the issues or ignore them all together, and so people SUFFER.

Really and truly I don't even think the boy in my class was gay. I don't know. And it really doesn't matter because someone decided to give him that label and he was treated horribly.

And I've been thinking, what if the actual answer to the bullying was if we, the grown ups, started apologizing to the people we hurt when we were young. Or are hurting now. What if we stood up for people being bullied. What if kids saw us regretting the things we did? Would they see that ostracising and mocking people who are not "just like me" is something they will one day regret?

I don't know if it will make a difference. But what if, step 1 is apologizing?

Pierre Maltais, I don't know where you are or how you are and I can't take back what was done in grade 6, but I deeply regret never standing up and passively going along with what we did to you. You deserve to have found wonderful people to share life with, and I hope you haven't let our 12 year old selves hold you back.

It is stupid to believe that one apology that no one will read can make a difference, but I am choosing to hope that the world can change, that instead of legislating children's intereactions they will learn from their parents to interact with compassion and love.

Those are my thoughts. And that's my apology. My ownership of responsibility.

Do you need to step up to the plate and help spread a whole new attitude of compassion and love? To change the future. I love the idea of making a future so unlike our past that the news makes us smile...

A Day for the Books

Kristina and I may have scared a lot of little children...but we caught Fred Penner's eye! (He made eye contact with us as we sang along to "Sandwiches" and after gave us hugs and told us he liked our energy.

FRED PENNER!!

That's right. A day for the books.

I have also mostly sorted out my Lent issues, and just have to decide that I can commit to what I've come up with (with assistance).

It Sneaks Up Every Year

Every year Lent sneaks up on me. Perhaps it's my non-liturgial lifestyle. I always remember Epiphany (my birthday) but less about what it is (perhaps a refresher on the church calendar is in order...)!

Anyway. Lent. The sneaky season of Lent. I always find myself about 2 days away from Ash Wednesday, realizing it's Ash Wednesday and I have NO IDEA what to give up/take on for Lent this year.

It is definitely TIME TO PANIC!

40 Below Zero

Not quite 50 (sorry Mr. Munsch), but chilly nonetheless.
I have heard it said, "After -10 (or other unreasonably warm temperature) it's all the same."

I do not agree.

There is "cool", "cold", "colder" and "I am not going outside".
These descriptors are not consistently defined by any of the temperature markers, but are more dependent on my mood and my planned activity for the day. So, when the world revolves around me meteorologists will have to actually be trained in psychology in order to actually predict the weather (or how it will be interpreted and forecasted).

I should go now.