My girlfriend and I were going to school, and the jerk was following us. He was two years younger, scary and nasty. We first giggled and then started joking loudly about his squeaky voice and gait. The freak started shouting curses, and we snapped boldly and decisively in response. The school gates were won by the winners of the fight. And suddenly a kid jumped up to us a cut lower. He came close to me and hissed, looking me angrily in the eye: “If you still say something offensive to him, I'll hit you! It won't be enough!” I was taken aback by the booger's impudence, but I didn't want to continue the series of winning jokes. The main thing was that it wasn't clear that he was standing up for him so much, he was a freak!
This boy that we, angry thirteen-year-old teenagers, teased for nothing had cerebral palsy. He went to school by himself and did well. He stood out, of course. I didn't hear anything about cerebral palsy at the time. I haven't heard anything about the fact that people are different. And special ones as well. And about the fact that there are also different people: autistic people with Down syndrome... People who can't hear speech by ear. Dyslexic people... Yes, with a million other features! I had two words: freak and moron.
Frankly speaking, I was not the only one who got it from me. I made fun of old-fashioned girls. Over phlegmatic pimple boys. Over C students and losers. And I can clearly remember why. Because they are NOT NORMAL, they do not meet the general expectations, ideals and norms that adults have been talking about all along. But on the other hand, yes! I'm doing my best, I'm much better!
I studied very well and was an obedient and diligent child, but even such a “gift” child may have parents who have a unique understanding of the process of raising children. More like training a dog. When praise and a kind word are only for appreciably good things, like five or washed dishes. When you share your innermost information, it will come back to you in a week as a mockery or reproach. I'm by no means blaming everything on my family. My own sister wasn't a monster like me. That's just how parenting sprouted perfectionism and anxiety. And neither the kindergarten teachers, whom I still remember with horror, nor the teachers at school explained to me that it is normal to make mistakes, to be different from others and to be myself. And it's absolutely not normal to go out of your way to “be good” and think that the whole world around you should change to fit the same size.
I'm so confident about this because I remember very well when I stopped bullying other children. At the age of 14, I came to the Theater of Youth Art, TUT. In their first year, the new students study in the “studio” — they make sketches, excerpts, and study theater. There was a very thin funny girl in our studio with glasses on. Once she showed a sketch where she was walking either on thin ice or on a tightrope. And while she was staggering, her glasses slid ridiculously off her nose. And since she sketched and balanced her hands, she couldn't afford to straighten them with her hand—because then it wouldn't be true and she could fall off an imaginary rope! And we, the rest of the students from the “working-class suburbs”, sat and laughed at her. And she kept teetering on a tightrope... After the sketch, the great teacher Alisa Akhmediyevna Ivanova quietly and sadly said that we were very bad spectators. She spoke quietly but firmly. About respect for creativity, about the originality and uniqueness of each of us. These words touched something inside and resonated in my heart. This has never happened again. After that, TUT became my home. I laughed loudly and a lot there, sang on the stairs, stayed late, fell in love, lived... In general, the moral is quite simple. As soon as I was accepted — with my loud “indecent” laugh, the noisy, chubby girl I was, I simply lost the desire to scare others “to the norm”. As soon as they began to respect me and allowed me to be a unique person, I immediately became kinder to others...
And that boy from school that we teased so violently died a few years later. I got hit by a car. He walked slowly, really. And I couldn't jump back, as often as we jump back, covered in cold sweat when the car is flying at us, we are people whom God gave the opportunity to walk and run fast. I found out about this when I was 19 years old and cried for several days. It seems to me then and now that I am also to blame. I still can't forget his voice. It was thin and loud. And I was a jerk.
And one more thing. I myself now have a child with special needs. And he gets it at school. I saw this with my own eyes: anxious little children, often complex and unaccepted for their complexity, try to put the picture of the world in some order at my son's expense. If you talk to their parents, the kids just “fly in”. And nothing is fundamentally changing.
Maybe I'll transfer to another school. It's the best I know, though. In the rest, even for an unfashionable phone, the guys get it from the “leaders”. Okay. My son is doing a good job. It's holding on. We're holding on. We're all unique, we're all different.
N.
Source: magazine Matrony.ru
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