Both Sides

“How was your birthday?” I asked her.
“Terrible”
“What? After that awesome party we all went to the night before?”
“I got suspended from school…”
Sputter, sputter…
“These two guys kept teasing me, so I beat one of them up. I told two different teachers about what those guys were doing, but they just told me to ignore them. Those guys just kept getting in my face.” She shrugs. She knows it was wrong, yet I am not sensing much remorse, either. She is in Jr High and lives down the street and around the corner with her Dad and two brothers. We all pitch in, knowing it isn’t easy to raise three teenagers as a single parent.

I immediately think about the girl in Massachusetts who took her own life after being bullied for 3 months. The article I read online left me shaking my head. It seems to me there isn’t just one person or one attitude that is to blame. I talked to my mom about it as I washed her hair the next day. Mom had surgery on her hand and can’t get it wet for a month. She spent most of her life gluing teenagers back together if they would let her and she was darn good at it, so she is always a good source to vent with on such subjects. That poor head of hers got a darn good scrubbing that day.

We talked about all the shoulda’s and coulda’s. Obviously, more kids need to learn and follow the advice, “if you don’t have anything nice to day, don’t say anything at all.” Still, the other message I feel is more prevalent amongst us is, “You can say what ever you want to as long as you think you are right.”

On one side, what the teachers said to my young friend was right, “Ignore them. Rise above it. They will wear themselves out and go away eventually.” On the other side, when you are 15, you can’t see farther than 4.3 seconds from now. What she heard was, “It’s no big deal to us, we aren’t helping, you are on your own”. So she did what would remove the threat for her 4.3 seconds of foreseeable future.

Mom agreed with me as my inner protective mother came out and I threatened to just head down to the school, grab some collars and tell them they dropped the ball. Or were those teachers just “saying something nice?” Then, with as much zeal, I am ready to turn on this little 15 year old and tell her...a thousand different reasons that hitting someone was not the best way to handle the situation, that there will always be jerks, and we can’t hit them all, just because we are right. Or can we?

I can see both sides. I stand here with sword in hand, ready to do battle, not sure which battle to join.