Schoolyard tactics

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I made the fatal mistake of stumbling upon Free Jinger and GOMI the other day.

It got me both sad and riled so I started writing the following under the title of "The World Is A Big Schoolyard".

The world is a big schoolyard. I've finally worked that out. I can't believe how long it's taken me to come to this. I'm not saying that everyone stays in the schoolyard. There are a vast number of people I know and love who no longer reside in the schoolyard but have moved on to maturity and with mindfulness. However, if you just scratch on the surface of adulthood you see it's still there - the schoolyard politics and hierarchies and competitiveness and jealousies and terrible, horrible bitchiness that grows and spreads like a cancer devouring (or trying to) the goodness in its path.

I just don't get it. Why would you have a forum totally dedicated to hating on bloggers? Why would you troll on other people's sites that they tend so lovingly just to feed your own hate and jealousy and then bitch about it to others? If you don't like a blog, if you want them to "Get Off My Internet" then it's simple - JUST CLICK AWAY! Then they're not ON your internet are they? Practically every blog I read and love is featured on GOMI. And the bitching! Nasty, hateful, spiteful stuff. Awful.

I guess it's part of the reason why I've been so quiet on the blogging/diary front lately. I just don't do hate. I don't do bitchy. I have never been able to understand it and I have handled it badly when it's been directed towards me. (no, I wasn't featured on GOMI as far as I know. They seem to leave writers under the disability category alone...kind of.)

Which got me thinking a lot about my family of origin and wondering what we would have been like if I hadn't have been born with achondroplasia. Would we still have the same acceptance and attitudes towards difference if we hadn't had first hand experience of difference ourselves? I ponder on this a lot. I remember early years when I didn't know I had a difference. I remember starting at children/young adults who were different and my mother calling us on it. I remember a boy being cruel to a little girl with an intellectual disability at school and I couldn't work out why. She was just a little girl as far as I was concerned.

I remember a young man named Paul who had an intellectual disability. It concerned me when I was three or four as I knew he was much older than me but he was acting a lot younger than me. After he and his mother got out of our car and we were driving home I said, "That boy's not proper, Mum!" Funny how I knew to wait until they were out of the car to make a statement like that.

I remember a young woman with an intellectual disability who lived across the road from us. Sally was in her 20's...or maybe even early 30's. She came over to our place many, many times and played Totem Tennis with us. You'd see her walking the streets with her dog...who was not desexed and constantly (so it seemed) on heat. Consequently there were a whole pack of male dogs with them. We kids knew that Sally was a grown up but acted like a little kid...and that was ok. We didn't tease her for it.

Once my little brother and I did tease her though because we thought she wasn't wearing any knickers. Truth be told, she possibly had a massive wedgie. Mum tore strips off us. We were sent to bed without dinner. Our teasing had nothing to do with her disability and everything to do with the fact we thought she had a bare bum!

Sally came to a sad end. Years later when we moved away we heard news reports that Sally had wandered off from her residential care facility and had become lost. She died of exposure.

A kid in our neighbourhood once yelled at my brother, "You're just picking on me because I'm black!" to which my brother replied, "No! I'm picking on you because you're a little turd and you're annoying!" Racism meant nothing to us. My little brother shouldn't have been picking on that kid anyway, but his race had nothing to do with it. (for the record....that kid was an annoying little turd!)

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that these are the actions of children.....and children grow up....or they're supposed to. Meanness and nastiness and bias doesn't compute in my family. Not accepting people because they look different, think different, act different, have different values, religious ideas doesn't factor. When we encounter such nastiness the common question is, "But why???"

Which is why I can't understand those who don't move on from childish ways....and continue with the schoolyard tactics of bullying and teasing and bitching and hurting others simply because they can......and these days they do it from the "safety" of their keyboard and screens. They don't have to witness first hand what their nastiness does.....which to me is the penultimate of cowardice.

So.....please.......if you don't like a writer's content, if their lives make you gag, if you can't stand seeing one more picture of their perfect children, if you don't like the way they are living their life, or educating their children, if you don't hold to their same religious beliefs or lack of......then for the love of all that is good......CLICK AWAY! Don't leave that snippy comment. Don't bitch about them on a forum. Just don't go there. Let them live their lives and you go and do the same. Spread a bit of goodness into the world by wishing them well and moving on.

We have enough hate in the world. Hating is easy. Challenge yourself to taking the better road. Live and let live.