I feel sorry for parents now that I am one. It seems like no matter
our intention and our purpose we just ruin our children's lives. In
that same gym class that had all of the other excitement was a kid
who pretty regularly pooped his pants. Because we all realized that
he was having a problem we were all kind and considerate and didn't
make a big deal about his problem. Just kidding, kids are bastards.
Once someone started in most people would mention something about how
bad he smelled or something else mean. The only limitation seemed to
be that no one said anything while the teacher was around. The kid
was naturally not really having a really positive experience in
school and his mom, well meaning as she could be, came to school and
made it worse. She asked our gym teacher if she could come and talk
to our class. He gave her some time in the assembly room where she
was able to use the white board. We were told to come sit down before
we dressed for class and the teacher threatened us with death and
destruction if we were not respectful during the mom's talk. She came
in and was quite nervous and emotional as she started explaining her
son's medical condition. She drew a rudimentary colon of two parallel
lines on the board with a blue marker and then indicated nerves along
each side with circles. She then explained that her son had an
operation on his colon and it had damaged the nerves that can feel
when he needs to poop. She demonstrated this by crossing out each
nerve circle with a red marker. She was emotional about the abuse her
son had been taking and begged all of us to please leave him alone. I
think for most of us, especially in that moment, felt pretty bad a
bout making fun of the poor guy. When she was gone things started to
seem funny again but most of us did leave him alone after that.
Except for one kid I remember who turned up the abuse and now had
specific information for abuse. Many other people were making a joke
which included drawing two parallel lines on something, drawing nerve
circles to either side and then crossing them out. It was a horrible
joke but to our little minds it was killing. As I think about it this
morning I am still ashamed of all of us. The kid eventually just
stopped coming to school and I don't know if he moved or dropped out
or what but I hope he found a place with nicer people.
