Coffee with Mike.

Last night was my night off.

I'm a full-time mom of two spirited unschoolers and sometimes my job is downright exhausting, so my husband gives me the right to a night off once in awhile.

It's always a little guilt-ridden and a little gleeful all at once. 

Last night I went to Barnes and Noble and spent far too much money on stuff for me and stuff for the kids.  I stayed until the store closed at 10PM.  On my way in I'd missed the store entrance at first and I drove mistakenly down the road a few blocks.  As I was driving where I shouldn't have been driving, I noticed a coffeehouse and told myself I'd like to hit that up if it was still open after my book binge.

And so it was.

The hours posted on the digital sign read: 6:30 AM - Midnight.  My kind of coffeehouse.

My plan was to grab something decaffeinated so I wouldn't keep myself up all night and then sit at a table all by myself and read.  This activity would be something like I imagine heaven will be, I thought, and went up to the counter.

 They had one fairly traded brew, but it was only available with caffeine.  This was a little disappointing, since I back fair trade as much as possible, so I made the sacrifice (I say this as though there aren't little children starving in Columbia and Uganda because of coffee that isn't fairly traded) and got the caffeine.  I asked for a for-here cup and took my seat after my order came up.

The place was practically empty.  I had my choice of any sort of table, and I chose one with four chairs and short legs and sat down to work with my reading and my joe.  Behind me was a man waiting for his date.  She'd given him a long order that made the cashier laugh in a text message, but she assured the man it was possible, and he breathed a sigh of relief.  This date was important.

In front of me were two men at separate tables, each busy with their laptops.  Each oblivious to anyone else in the room.

To my left, about three tables away, sitting alone at a booth meant for several people, was a man in his early to mid-twenties, surrounded by a bookbag, coffee cup, saucer, iPhone, laptop, and headphones.  He was mostly staring at the wall in front of him.

I thought I was in for a quiet night.

I smiled as the man's date arrived and they exchanged pleasantries and I eavesdropped a little while they chatted about her day and her work-out at the gym, and then I focused on my own things.

The coffee was great.

And then, suddenly, the silence was broken:

"People here are mean.  They're like cactuses, don't you think?  Like burrs."  The voice was loud, nervous, tenor...  I put down my reading and looked around - what?...

"I mean they're mean, right?  Sorry...  you're not from here, are you?"  It was the man surrounded by his paraphernalia.  The one who had been staring at the wall.  He sounded a bit maniacal: talking fast, looking angry, ravaging his fingernails with his front teeth.

"Oh, me?  No, I'm not from here."

"Oh.  Well I just think the people are so intolerant, so unfriendly, don't you?  Do you get that impression?"  I glanced around nervously - I assumed most people in the place were from around here and I was certain everyone in the room could hear him loud and clear.

"I don't know.  I haven't had any problems."

"Oh.  Sorry.  I don't mean to assume things."

"It's okay.  No worries."  I went back to my reading.

"I'm gay."

I put my things down again.  I sipped my coffee.

"It's hard?"  I asked.  I reached back into my listening class days: Sanford Meisner on acting - listening.  Your partner is your life's blood.  Listen, and repeat.

"Yeah, it's hard.  It's hard here."

"You're not from here?"

"No.  I'm from Florida."  His speech was slowing a little.  He wasn't so nervous.  I wasn't so scared of him.

"Oh.  It's better there?"

"Yeah.  A lot better.  I mean - the guys here won't even talk to you.  The women - everyone is just mean.  My mom moved here from Florida and I had to come with her."

Part of me wanted to run.  To drain the coffee, get up, and get out.  I could feel the couple behind me staring at the back of my neck.  Waiting.

I drained the coffee.  I packed up my stuff.

"Sorry.  Sorry to bother you.  I don't mean to assume anything.  I mean, I don't think you're gay or anything, I just..."

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and returned the cup to the counter, then went over to Mike's table.

I put my hand out toward his chest.

"I'm Missy."  I said.

He stared at my hand for a moment, then took it in his.  His entire body relaxed into his seat.

"Mike.  Sorry to bother you...  I didn't mean to interrupt your coffee..."

"No, it's totally fine.  Why are you here with your mom?"

Mike and I talked for a long time.

He'd been living in Europe for the past three years out of a backpack.  He'd left the states after college and gone backpacking in Europe with nothing but clothes and a calling card.  He'd lived off of the kindness of strangers.  He'd met amazing people and heard their stories.  The shock of coming back to the U.S. where picking up a hitchhiker was a death wish was getting to him.  He hated having to use a car to get everywhere...  to get anywhere.  And the judgement was the hardest part.  People finding out he was gay, and deciding he wasn't worth their time.... or worse...that he was.

"I need to get out of here.  Maybe go to Vermont or something.  I heard it's better.  Up in New England."  I nodded.  I wasn't really sure about anything, but I thought there ought to be hope for Mike somewhere.  If not here.

I shook his hand again before I left.

He told me good luck in my travels.  I smiled and wished him the same.

I asked him how he was going to get out of here - get a job elsewhere?  What would he do?

"I'll just grab my backpack and go," he said.

I nodded.  You do what you know.

Overheard on the way to the school bus-stop today.

From one elementary aged girl to another:

"I can tell those shoes aren't new.  Your mom just washed them so they would look like they were."

Progress?

So I thought that there was a lot of progress when it came to how people were treated in the world.

I know - I'm naive.  I admit this freely.  I guess mostly I just WANT things to be better.  I WANT people to have more respect for one another.  I want men and women to treat one another as equal in intelligence and conversation and worth.  I want us all to show respect to one another as human beings.

But this week has proven to me time and time again that we are a far cry from respecting one another. 

I have been wanting to write for a few days, but haven't been able to bring myself to face the topic.

It's kind of stupid, I suppose, to make a big deal out of something that could easily be brushed off as nothing.  I would rather do that, pretend it didn't happen and wasn't happening, than write a blog about it and think about it for ten to thirty minutes while I compose this piece.  I've also pondered long and hard the fact that this sort of blog my be precisely the thing to fuel the fire behind what's been going on, so I won't be mentioning names or websites or anything else, just talking about the issue.  I'm sure that the one I've been witness to isn't the only thing like this out there.  In fact, I've done things like this myself - with boys - and I might as well just come out and say it.

There is this Facebook page from a high school that is posting pictures of yearbook pages and then posting rankings of all of the girls on a scale of 1 - 10 based on "hotness". 

This might be relatively harmless when you're sitting at home with your own yearbook with a few of your friends talking about who's hot and who's not.  I know these conversations go on.  I did my share of drawing hearts around boys faces and giving them numbers and drawing mustaches and devil's horns on girls I didn't like - but, honestly, I did that in sixth grade, and this is about the class of 2012.  Which means that most likely, whoever has decided to post this little gag is someone who is in high school. 

I know that high school is a hard place - but this is so juvenile I wasn't even sure what to make of it.  Literally, my sixth grade year book is the one with all the markings.  After that - really - what's he point?  Especially in the confines of your own home.

To put that yearbook onto a public forum?   To exploit the girls in your school for all the world to see with your opinions of their "hotness" blazened there mockingly - this is childish.  This is mean.  This is bullying.  This is wrong.  And on top of that - to do it anonymously?  Now on top of this childish meanness there is also cowardice. 

I understand the anonymousness, frankly.  There are girls who wouldn't lay down and take this kind of BS - who would find the culprit who thoughtlessly marked them as 1's and 2's and have no issue with knocking them to the ground with a bloody face.  It's not really those girls I worry about.

Does it still sting to a girl with self-confidence to see that she has a low number on this random ranking system and that everyone and their brother has seen this ranking system and that tons of people in the school have commented about how funny it is?  Of course it does.  Those are the girls who might knock you out if you ever reveal your identity.  Those are also the girls who nurse their wounds privately - shake off the sting - and post that it's a funny site. 

But there are other girls out there. 

There are the girls who can't recover.

Does it sound dumb?  That they take it so seriously?  Sure it does.  But is it true?  Yes.  It is.

Girls have been in tears over this site.  People have mocked them about their numbers, commenting on their rankings.  Taken the site seriously from all angles.  These are the girls about whom I most worry.  They might even laugh on the surface, but inside...  and alone with the mirror, they wonder - why am I a 2?  Why not a 4?  Why not something more?  Is this what people truly think of me?  And why is it worth it to get up in the morning?

From this perspective - the one where the years beyond high school seem a lifetime away and this seems the only world you will ever know...  there is great danger in tangling with a young woman's self-esteem.

To anyone reading this who attends the school of which I am speaking, anyone who might be male and reading this - I urge you to seek out those girls and let them know they are beautiful.  And mean it.

The hero to all of them would be the young man or group of men who passed out stickers with "Perfect 10"'s on them to all the girls in the class, because he could see beyond the surface.

If you've got the guts to be a hero to the girls in the class of 2012 - kudos and blessings.  I hope that you are reading this now, or that you have already thought of something equally special on your own.

You cannot counteract hate with hate, but you can counteract it with LOVE.  Love will win in the end. 

And if you're one of those girls - make some stickers yourself - you don't have to wait for a guy on a white horse.  Pass 'em out to the girls around you - let those jerks know who's boss.  You can't put a number on a person.  You can't "rank" a living creature.  You can't judge beauty.  You can't objectify intellect and character and have a meaningful existence. 

And to those who did this thing.  I get it.  I totally do.  Things are funny and fun and you don't think about the people you might hurt.  And you can rank your friends however and you can't make your own system and you can laugh about your secret as you walk through the hallways - and maybe you're not the most popular kid/s and maybe you are but either way, you've got to think about what you've done now.  You've got to look at it through the eyes of the people you hurt and you need to do something about it.  You screwed up.  It was a joke - and maybe you still think it's funny - but people got hurt - so the joke went sour.  It's a bad joke.  Own up and buck up and say you're sorry.  The fun ended when the first person took this seriously.  When the first girl felt the first sting and thought - people really think this about me.  This doesn't label you for life.  High school ends.  But if you keep on with something after others feel like it's hateful - life just keeps getting darker. 

I think the reason it was hard for me to write this post is because the entire premise goes against everything this blog stands for.  It was hard because it was so easy for me to put myself in the girls' shoes who were ranked...  and in the shoes of the person or persons who did the ranking.  Both shoes fit me at one time.  This blog has been about shaking off old chains.  As I perused the ranking page...  I felt...  guilt.  And pain.  Old guilt and old pain that compounded into shame and there I was - a ninth grade girl as my books were pushed from my hands.  A tenth grade girl who wouldn't date that boy because he "wasn't popular enough".  I shudder to remember the person I was.  The person I made myself into.  I am thankful that I was able to move past those years and hopeful that everyone has recovered who I hurt in the process.  There is life after bullying - for the bullied, and for the bully.  We don't have to live out our scars.  Here's hoping we can open our eyes.

On Bullying.

I want to tell all of you a story about a girl.

This girl was relatively pretty, smart, and as kind as one can manage in middle school/junior high. 

Unfortunately, she attended a junior high school (7 - 9th grade) where being intelligent was not cool.  She also happened to be a "late bloomer", and so when other girls were experiencing the woes of puberty and bonding about it, she was only wearing a bra in gym class because it seemed like the thing to do at the time, not because she needed one.

As a result of these things, and perhaps others, she found herself in certain situations.

There was the time on the bus where one of the boys decided to assign nicknames to everyone in the little posse of people who lived on the same route.  While some were assigned names like "Chunky Cheese" because of their weight, she was assigned "The Board", because of the size of her chest.

There was the time when she wore her hair "half-back", only because her mother helped her figure out how to hold her thick hair in the barrette, and another girl tore it angrily from her hair and said, "It was crooked."  She couldn't put it back in herself, and she didn't have a brush, so her hair simply looked rather silly for the remainder of the day.

There was the time when the same girl who snatched the barrette decided that she wanted her lunch money, and she slammed her into her locked in order to get it.

There was the time when, for hat day, she thought she was being very clever when she wore her Goofy hat from Disney World.  She was so excited to participate.  But when she arrived at the door to her Spanish class all of the older boys began to bark at her, and call her a dog.

There was the time when a boy pinched her bottom repeatedly in the back of the social studies classroom and the teacher pretended not to see, and she didn't know what to do.  And the boy who fondled her breasts during the movies in 8th grade and the teacher wouldn't move her seat when she requested it because her reason wasn't good enough (she was too embarrassed to tell the real one).

There was the time when she wore a pretty dress to school with many ties up the back, and the "popular girls" untied them all, and she couldn't figure out how to fix them, and so she ran into the gym locker room and cried.  And there was that kind girl that time, who helped her to fix it, and then had all of her books knocked out of her hands in the hallway the next afternoon.

There was the time when there was a candy fight on the field trip bus, all in fun, and she participated, until she accidentally hit someone with too much clout in the face, and then they all turned on her, and filled her hair with bubble gum and Jolly Ranchers.

There were those specific times.  And there were times when there were just disgusted looks, the times when she was left out, picked last, ridiculed, outcast.

There was the time when no one would allow her to sit at their lunch table unless she promised to sit a seat away from the group and keep to herself - not talking to anyone.

In case you haven't yet figured it out, that girl to whom all those things happened in junior high school was me.

I remember them clearly now, and some of the old hurt still wells up inside when I think of them.  But I wanted to write this entry especially today, because bullying is such a hot button issue right now.

Some kids killed themselves because they were bullied about their sexuality.  The GLBTQ community is rallying around them and posting videos called "It Gets Better" to try and prevent future suicides.  To tell them it'll be okay.

I wanted to write this because I think it's important for everyone to know and think about the fact that bullying is a problem for so many kids.  Not just GLBTQ kids.  I was a staight, white, thin, smart, sort of medium looking kid.  Not tall or short.  Just me.  I'm sure there was something about it that made it easy for them to pick on me.  Maybe the fact that I was a late developer or that I cared a lot about my grades or that I didn't play a particular sport at the time or that I was still in Girl Scouts - I don't know the answer.  I may have just presented myself to the world in a really vulnerable way.  But the fact is - it happened.  Those things above happened to me and so many more things.  I'm sure so many more than I could ever remember.

But I want to talk a little bit here about hope.

First of all - there are those people who give hope in the moment or soon after.  Those kids who go to the locker room with you and fix the ties in your dress even though they know they'll be taking some of the same the next day.  There was a little circle of outcasts who sort of found each other and we all ate our lunch in the auditorium.  It was me, the girl who had been out of school last year at the mental hospital, and the gay kid.  They found ME and invited me into their place.  They shared their lunches with me when mine was stolen.  There are always going to be those little rays of hope in our lives.  And those are the things that you need to cling to if you're in that place right now.

The other thing I'd like to say is that, as others are saying right now:  It Gets Better.

This is a true statement - because once you leave high school it's no longer socially acceptable to put bubble gum and Jolly Ranchers in someone's hair - for example.  There are no more lockers in which to be thrown.  And we grow up to realize that those for every teacher who doesn't care there are three who just might.

Through all of this the most important thing for me has been the ability to look back on what my life was then and how my life changed.  How God brought me through all of that pain into so much joy.

After ninth grade my dad was transferred to another church (he's a pastor) and I was mortified.  I wanted to stay there - believe it or not - because I was afraid the new place could only be worse.  On top of everything else, to be the new kid?  No.  I didn't want that.

But when I got there things were so different!

It was a much more arts based school.  I had a place to belong.  I was invited to join the swim team.  I got myself some friends.  And the next time a bully picked on me I had a teacher who FLIPPED OUT on that girl.

As an adult, there are still people who might look down on you or who don't like you or what have you, but you are empowered to walk away from them.  You don't have to keep going to that school and facing those things day in and day out.  You can walk away.

Some day there WILL be a place to belong.  There will be a community who accepts you.

I don't know where that will be for you, but I know that it's out there.

There is a place to belong for everyone.

So I guess..all I want to really say is - to those of you who are being bullied right now - It Gets Better.  And - God will make a way for you.  Some day, you too can look back and know that while your life may have been horrifying, there is an END to that - you grow up.  You get out.  You find help.  You find friends.  You get support.

I don't know everyone who reads this blog and I certainly don't know all the kids who are being bullied right now - but I pray for strength - and I pray for your very own band of auditorium kids who will share their lunches and hug you when you cry.  And for a teacher who will stick up for you, no matter what the system says.  And for the person who is willing to risk her own popularity to fix your dress in the locker room, or help you get the candy out of your hair.

Much love,

Missy

PS - Is there someone who was there for you when you were bullied?  A teacher, other student, friend, family member?  Leave a comment to tell others about your Hope Person.  If there wasn't someone like that - how did you escape from the cycle of bullying?