Last night, Junior High Kid asked, “if you had a friend who swore a lot, what would you say to get them to stop?” Personally, I thought, “please don’t talk like that around me” was a good choice, but he’s already tried that, and the friend doesn’t see what the big deal is. “They’re just words.” Yeah, but certain words can make you sound uneducated and crass, which this kid really isn’t.
I don’t know…I can’t help but find it interesting that the NON-church-going-kid in this relationship is offended by the vocabulary that the CHURCH-going-kid chooses to use! I know, I know…I shouldn’t be so judgmental. And in this particular case, I REALLY shouldn’t be so judgmental because I do actually like this kid a lot. (There are many ways in which he is a good influence on my kid.) And I like his parents a lot. And I seriously doubt his parents are sitting in their house judging ME.
But do you know what? My reaction really isn’t about them, or the swearing, or “church-going-folk” in general. It’s about neighbors we had when we lived in a community in which they were not the only ones to ask us, “So…what church do you go to?” almost right away after meeting us and then based on our response to that one question, made a decision on whether or not to get to know us further.
“We are not church-goers” was NOT the correct response when that family asked.
This was when College Student was much younger and was at a point in his life where he really needed friends…and their younger son (let’s call him Adam because that was his name) was into the same things College Student was and had a similar temperament etc. But we were not church-goers. This was a BIG DEAL. And apparently it meant we were “a bad influence” on Adam (or so he told me…he also told College Student that he would “burn in Hell for all eternity” when they were six. Nice, huh?) Adams’s parents didn’t forbid him from playing with College Student, but they severely limited the amount of time the two could spend together. One hour was the limit. So if Adam was at our house, they would come and get him (or send Big Brother to get him) after one hour. And if College Student was at their house, he would be sent home after one hour. Even if they, and the rest of the neighborhood kids were playing OUTSIDE, they would send my College Student home after one hour (even though he was probably the quietest, shyest and most sensitive kid in the group) to sit in his own front yard and watch the rest of the kids playing all afternoon across the street.
Adam’s brother…(let’s call him Eric, since that was HIS name) was three or four years older than College Student. And I think he had a hard time accepting the fact that College Student would go to HIS class for math every day, so he started bullying College Student! There was one winter day when College Student was playing alone in our back yard and all the kids were next door (which was NOT where Adam and Eric lived) and Eric got all those kids to collect these big chunks of ice, and all of a sudden they started POUNDING College Student with them. I was SO mad! I never said anything to Adam and Eric’s mom…it’s been ten years and I’m still mad at myself for not speaking up. Why DIDN’T I say something? My child came in battered at bruised from that…and he had done NOTHING to provoke it…except come from a non-church-going family. Church or no, which of us was really raising more civilized children? Her or me? (See, I like to think I’m not judgmental, but I can be just as judgmental as anyone else.)
Bullying is a theme I keep coming back to again and again in my writing. I really should write about bullying and religion someday…I wonder if I could do it without being judgmental? Too bad I can’t name the bully in my story Eric…but I would never do that because one of my dearest friends has a son named Erik. Even though he spells it differently, I could never name a bully in one of my stories Eric or Erik. Or even Erica or Erika.
Oh Dori, that breaks my heart. I am going through similar things here..but it hasn’t gotten that bad. It’s just obvious that some kids aren’t allowed to come over here to play..and if they do there’s a parent on my doorstep to retrieve them.
And we are church goers…just the wrong church…we cheer for the wrong football team also…and in my neighborhood I’m not sure which is the worst “sin.” Oh yeah, and there are beer cans and bottles in our recycling bin each week…which I also suspect has something to do with the ostracization.
I’m so sorry these things happen.
And I’m really not supposed to be here…so I better go now.
You’ve posted things that have broken my heart, too (sometimes I commented, sometimes not)…and some of your posts have brought back that time in our lives. We’re in so much better of a place now…I hope you will be one day, too.
Just the other day I had to tell the neigbhor kid to stop talking religion at my house. He was inferring that my boys baptisms were invalid and they would need to be re-baptized.
I belive that God created the Earth, and I also acknowledge the evidence of Evolution. I can reconcile the two…as can many Christians. The world is far too complex and intricate for me to believe it just “happened,” and the scientific evidence we have reveals the pattern. But the kid across the street claims that Satan INVENTED evolution and planted fossils and stuff to confuse us.
Boy, can I relate to this, living in conservative Lancaster County! First question people ask around here: “So what church do YOU go to?”
I feel for you. I figure if they have to ask, it doesn’t matter what your response is. It’ll be wrong. Fortunately for me, I don’t live in that kind of community anymore. Now I live in a nice, liberal college town.
Ahh . . . must be nice! Around here they think that you’re a demon-worshiping bound-for-hell person if you decorate for Halloween!
Last year (or maybe it was the year before), my kids carved The Flying Spaghetti Monster into their pumpkins. The nice religious lady across the street (and remember, we live in a nice place now) asked what that was. We uh…just said it was some random carving.
That is too funny.
Around us, if you don’t, they just figure you must be a Jehovah’s witness.Our elementary school no longer has Halloween parties, thanks to them. Instead we dress up like ourselves, I mean, we dress up like “farmers” (missing teeth, straw hats and dungarees, because we all know that’s what farmers look like) and have a fall festival.
Its a fun festival, though the hillbilly stereotype kinda makes me wonder.
That’s funny. In our local schools, we can’t even say the word “Halloween.” It’s called Fall Festival or Autumn Fest. Too bad. I always thought that Halloween is the most FUN time of the year!!
Me too! And the best part was making the costumes! (not buying them at wally world… bo-ring!!!)
Grrr.
I’ve had a few similar experiences, though we just church elsewhere. I think the issue for my son was that we were outsiders. And a bunch of kids decided to play hunter and game at the playground, and made Z the turkey, and began pelting him with rocks. They even tried to get my youngest involved. I didn’t talk to the parents– knew it would be pointless– let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I headed the kids off as they were running away(saw me coming) and confronted them about it with a long thing about how sometimes little things can turn out to be bad, even though you don’t mean them to be more than play, and that in future I would expect them to use this new information and their good judgement and make better decisions, yada yada. And walked away.
But I wanted to pound the living… out of them.
Little savages, grown from big savages.
Wow, that’s mature! I won’t tell you what I would’ve liked to say to that mother because, well, I’ve sort of implied that we are nice people who only use nice language in our family.
😀
I know. I think the key there is, “would liked to have said”.
Implies some judicious use of tongue biting (and forced fist unclenching, on my part).
I am sorry about all the bullying in the world and people like you can write great stories about it and help stop it :/