It Hurts Me More Than It Hurts You

I look over my inventory. Helmet?check. Shoulder pads?check. Shin guards?check. Cup?meh. Pass. Nothing to lose. It all fits just fine. I was afraid of that. Otherwise, I could have postponed  this confrontation until I lost weight.

We chose the time. That would be now. We pick the place. The playground is a good spot. The others will be easily distracted. We sandwich the poor, defenseless teen between us on a park bench and set out to break his heart and blow his mind.

There's no delight in this. I hate that it is necessary. My stomach is churning. My back hurts from tension. I'm a person of many words but can pull nothing but vague ideas at the moment. Where do I start?

I know what I want to accomplish here. My son is 14 and nearly a man. There are things that he needs to know; truths that will take a few years to understand and to gain mastery over.  So we took the first step into uncharted waters for us. We started to dismantle our son's view of the world.

Let's not fool ourselves here. It is easy to live in Absoluteville. We raise our children with the belief that they can be whatever they desire with enough hard work. They can do anything that they put their mind to, right? Ain't no mountain high enough and all that.  

We tell them that cops are good and criminals are bad. School will prepare you for the real world. All men are created equal. We encourage them to follow their heart to Happiness where birds tie ribbons in their hair and mice make them clothes. Some of us even insist that we get to actually vote for President.

Do you remember when you first saw the grey? The first time you witnessed an innocent harmed, a heart shattered, a baddie get away with it? Can you still feel the lump in your chest? Everything that you knew about right and wrong, about justice, about fairness, was declared null and void. Perhaps you now started to see unfairness everywhere. All of a sudden the world became very frightening because the rules that you thought we all agreed upon were more suggestions than laws.

That's when you are evicted from Absoluteville. At that moment, you needed to find a new reality. Cynicism, anger, fear and rebellion are natural responses to this kind of shock. If a child isn't communicated with, listened to, and comforted in this time, he will inevitably feel alone and apart.

Another liability of residing for too long in Absoluteville is that the blessing of encouragement that we give to our children can easily become the swords of judgment used against their peers. A person who believes that anyone can succeed will have little respect for the person who is barely treading water.
Tsk, tsk, they must be doing something wrong. Why public school is the great leveling ground for all people! Curriculum is standardized. State tests are administered by qualified teachers!. We are created equally and have the same God given rights and benefits as the person who craps in his pants and begs for spare change downtown. He's just not taking advantage of this land of opportunity.

But people aren't created equally. That their parents had sex is sometimes where the resemblance ends. The kid with the absentee father, exhausted mother, living in a house with no heat and attending a local school that is overcrowded and under-funded is likely not going to be jockeying for scholarships with the child who has both parents at every soccer game, who has braces on his teeth and who attends a public school with computers and a salad bar.  

As much of a liability as a weak education, is a lack of social skills. Children who aren't around successful adults will not easily know how to behave so that they are attractive company for successful people. I'm not just talking about using the right fork. The ability to communicate well, both verbally and in written form is quickly becoming a relic of our past. Showing respect, practicing humility, and accepting authority ? these are all considered weaknesses to today's youth. However they are intrinsic to gainful employment.

No, son. We don't all have the same opportunities. Not even in the womb since prenatal care is not universal. All schools are not the same, and that's [i]by design[/i]. You see, schools are funded by property taxes and reflect the neighborhoods that they are in, even the bad ones. Poverty is often generational. What's that? Why yes, our country has a bunch of money. But, not for schools. Not for healthcare. Not for breaking the cycle of poverty.

And as he digests that, I sip my soda. There is much more ground to cover but I need to take it slow. Over the years we have covered how people are manipulated by advertising that feeds on their fears of inadequacy. We showed him the insane amount of credit card and HELOC offers that are sent our way as we are a culture of debtors. When money was tight, we were open about how much it costs to be broke in America as we were hit with one fee after another for having late payments. We have tried to raise him with honesty from the beginning, but too much cynicism makes Johnny a dull boy (or a lunatic) so we drove him to Absoluteville and now it's time to take our lumps.

As we expected, the pendulum swung and this is now a terrible country and the leaders are heinous and why can't we change it...etc. I scrambled for a script that wasn't there.

I know that we'll get through this. He's a good kid and we're here for him. I just wish I'd worn that cup.

by Lorna Peden Waterman contributing writer for Fabulously40