In your first post to our class blog, write about a time in whhich you did something you now regard as out of character as a result of a group think or cultural anxiety.
For example, one of my most regrettable childhood moments was when I punched a girl in the face in the third grade. I probably don't strike you as a punch-others-in-the-face kind of person, and I like to believe I have abjured that quality, but when it came to tetherball in the third grade, I defied my typical character.
A girl named Olivia had recently transferred into my elementary school where I was queen of the playground. This was less of a voted-upon title and more one I earned as the result of my superior tetherball skills. Olivia wanted to join in the tetherball fun, as that was the preferred activity of all the third grade girls. Unfortunately, Olivia made the detrimental decision of wearing green jumpers and lederhosen from her native country, Germany. Now, in a world where cropped T's and leggings were the height of sophistication, Olivia's lederhosen provoked mockery and rejection from the world of tetherball and popular 10 year-old girls.
When she challenged me, the playground queen, to a match, I looked forward to the opportunity of embarassing her further, of going beyond the verbal mockery directed toward her fashion choices. She proceeded to school me in front of my classmates, at which point I proceeded to punch her in the nose.
I was a mean girl. Not just in this instance, but really throughout my elementary school days. When I look back on that moment and others, I am embarrassed and feel these events are out of character for me. That mean girl mentality I adopted is a product, I believe, of school group think. When one is different, others gang up on that person and, in my anecdote, one sometimes receives a punch in the face by a mean girl.
Now you go. :)
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I consider myself someone who follows the rules and shows respect to the teachers, but last year I did some thing I probubly wouldn't do without cultural anxiety. Last year during fianals week, I was studding for math with a group a friends. We were being to loud and were asked repetedly to be quiet. Unfortunetly, we were kicked out of the library. It seems small, but at the time I was shocked. It wasn't like me to be kicked out of anwhere much less the library. Hopefuly the next time around, things will be better.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in kindergarten I was a girl scout. I always had fun with it and i thought it was a pretty cool thing to be, up until first grade. That's when all the cool boys and girls started to shun girl scouts and boy scouts because they were "uncool." Since I was part of this "popular" crowd I thought I was going to lose my reputation and all my friends, so I gradually started skipping meetings and extracurricular activities with all the girl scouts. Eventually I just quit all together. I now look back on that behavior and realize that it was stupid of me to stop doing something that I liked just because other people thought poorly of it. I don't change myself to be what other people want anymore and I'm happier that way. I think that because of all the other children's influences it made me scared to do what I wanted because it could be seen as "weird."
ReplyDeleteI am a very left-brained person. So, there are certain things that I just simply am not good at and do not enjoy, like art or music. I have always struggled at any sort of art and could never do the simplest tasks like learning to play twinkle twinkle little star on the recorder. But, in 8th grade I signed up for guitar class. My decision may have been based upon my hopes to have any slight musical inclination like most of my friends, or simply because I had lots of friends in the class that I wanted to be with. Either way, joining guitar class was a completely uncharacteristic thing for me to do and was a decision based primary on the lives and activities of my friends. Looking back, while I had fun with the people in the class, I cannot fathom why I thought that it would be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteThere is a very distinct memory I have in the seventh grade of when our school went to Elitch Gardens for our detention-free reward. After a day of fun and spending time with friends, we all boarded the bus bound for school. My regard for the respect of teachers is normally very high, but on that day, after we made the bus and we all had been in a good mood, that regard had somehow vanished, thanks to the presence of my friends. When a science teacher named Mr. Sprague completed attendance, I blurted, "Thanks, Wally!" Mr. Sprague went on to tell me not to call him by that until I graduated from high school. Since then, I have never called a teacher by their first name.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not it is a good thing, I have a very independent character and rarely act in a certain way, "just because everyone else is." That said, I do fell anxious about standing when everyone else is sitting.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone thinks about acting out of character, they often think of that in a bad way, and rightly so. Acting out of character forces a person to be someone they are not, to be untrue to themselves. A common song that is sung in our current society is to be true to oneself. However, one of the biggest times that I have acted out of character due to "group think" turned out to be a very good thing.
I used to be a very quiet person, I talked the bare minimum to those I didn't know and only felt comfortable with my really close friends. I was very loyal but very shy and sometimes people believed me to be slightly standoffish due to the fact that I never talked to them. This was how I was, this was who I was.
My friends, class, and teachers all pressured me to break this shell.
There was no "ah ha" moment. But through a continual pushing myself I began to talk more and to feel more comfortable doing so. I was acting out of character, but soon enough that became my character.
In a way they pressured me to be untrue to myself, and it happened to be the best thing that happened to me, it allowed me to be who I wanted to be, and ultimately to be the individual that I am now. I have learned to express myself without fear.
I cry. Some people display emotion through other outlets but mine are directly wired to my tear ducts. However in a sociaty where crying is weakness I contain it. Sometimes I can't help it and I begin to cry anyways, but generally I can restrain the tears. I cry a lot at movies because it's ok there. At a movie you are effected by other people's pain, not your own. So there I cry. But in general I don't anywhere else. Sociaty's battery has encouraged me to control it in public, but that means that sometimes the build up of emotions is triggered at home and I cannot help it. I cry at things I shouldn't when I am at home. But anyways what I am trying to say is that cultural anxiety has caused me to keep things in. It is desensatizing me and leaving me alone when I do cry. Crying alone is the worst, yet most frquent way to cry.
ReplyDeleteFor those who know me, I hope I come off as a kind, helpful person who will drop what I'm doing to lend a hand if I can manage it. I look at it this way: if I help someone today when they need it, I would hope they share compassion with me when I'm most in need. I veered from my personality back in middle school though to maintain my status instead of doing what I believe would have been the right thing to do now that I look back on it.
ReplyDeleteIt was 6th grade - or was it 7th - I can't remember, since the period of time was so short. There was a transfer student, Marquis. He was a good-hearted person I believe, but Marquis was...different. Other kids considered him as odd, and I thought that there was something strange about him too, honestly.
One day during transition from English class, Marquis was seeking help from me regarding sentence structures. I thought a moment and said, "Umm...sure, I guess," which truthfully meant, "I don't really want to because being near you makes me look bad, but if you're persistent, I will break down and help you."
A week or so passed by and he continued to endure classmate's remarks and utter loneliness. I made up my mind that night in bed that enough was enough and I was going to reach out to him the very next day. Ironically and coincidentally, Marquis wasn't there the next day. Or the next. Or the day after that. He had transferred to another school very suddenly, and nobody knew why.
Months later, I was having a conversation with some other classmates who convinced me that Marquis must have been autistic. I felt even worse knowing that he had reached out to me for help and I ignored it out of cultural anxiety.
Marquis, I am sorry for my actions and please forgive me.
Most people that know me, (and even people that don't know me very well) think that I am a sweet, calm and put together girl. That is why this memory from pre-school stands out in my head as a time when I didn't act "like myself," at least according to my family.
ReplyDeleteOne day, my brother Tyler, and I, were sitting at our chairs eating breakfast. I had brought my favorite stuffed animal down to the table, a jackrabbit, cleverly named "jackrabbit." Now if any of you know my brother, you know that he can be (what my mom likes to call) a nudge; a person who purposely tries to annoy you. So there we are at the table when all of a sudden Tyler stole my jackrabbit. THREE times I asked him, very sweetly, "Tyler, can I please have my jackrabbit," when finally I had enough and screamed, bloody murder, "I WANT MY JACKRABBIT!!!"
I am sure that I surprised everyone with my reaction. The culture here, my family, had pinned me as someone who was quiet, calm and sweet; which, I usually am. But in this case, I went outside the boundaries of what was culturally acceptable for me in my family.
Normally I am the kind of person who doesn't like to hurt other people, but when it comes to my sister, well, I can get pretty mean. But because I wanted to look "cool" I would taunt and tease her openly in front of my friends. I now see that it was unkind and silly of me to try so hard to impress people. Sorry Elli.
ReplyDeleteMost people know I'm a pretty quiet and gentle person and that I don't get angry very easily. So, imagine the reaction I got from parents and teammates at my soccer game, when I decided to kick the ball at some girl's head (on purpose). Earlier in the game, this chick rammed our goalie into the ground so hard she almost tore her ACL and couldn't play the rest of the game. I'm sweeper, so I had to fill in for her, which stressed me out because I'd never played goalie before and didn't want to let the team down. Naturally, she took the first shot on me and naturally, I didn't block it. She shot me a little smirk and started doing this stupid "victory" dance, at that point, something inside me just snapped. I grabbed the ball out of the net and punted it right into her face (from about 5 feet away). Definitely got a red card on that one... Looking back, I think the pressure of not letting the team down and avenging my goalie pressured me into doing something out of character.
ReplyDeleteRecently, I was invited to a friend's party where we stayed the night in downtown Denver for a night, and then went to Eliches the next day. I was excited, and had looked forward to it the whole week. As soon as I joined the other girls invited to the party at the mall, which was where we were to meet before heading downtown to the hotel, I realized that I was very different from the other girls on the trip. These girls wore tons of eyeliner (I don't own a stick of eyeliner) and they would cuss at any opportunity(Also something very foreign to me). Every one of them was an obvious extrovert, yelling to hot guys in the mall and such. I began to worry a bit, because I wasn't like these girls at all. The complete opposite, in fact. I'm not saying I'm a shy person, because I most definitely am not, but I'm not one to go yelling after every attractive guy in the mall. So we headed downtown, had dinner, and after exploring around downtown came back to our hotel room, where the other girls proceeded to scream out profanities and cuss at everything. Feeling the need to "fit in" I giggled and laughed and even occasionally joined in, much to my discomfort, in order to be accepted by girls I didn't even have respect for. I followed their lead the next day as they chatted up every other guy at Eliches, and by the time I got home to my own room, finally alone, my conscience was so weighted that I just took a shower and went right to bed, wondering what in the world had given me the desire to do any of that stuff. The anxiety of not fitting in with my surroundings completely changed my personality for a weekend, and it's something that I hate to look back on and remember.
ReplyDeleteIn sixth grade my best friend and I got in a big fist fight and we were pulling each other's hair and yelling at each other and usually I don't do that kind of thing when I am mad at someone. I have known her since we were about two and I am still best friends with her to this day. I guess on that one particular day we just didn't agree with one another and we just started hitting each other. I don't even remember what it was about, but we forgave each other soon after that and everything was better.
ReplyDeleteOnce in middle school I was at a friends house sleepingover. We were just watching movies, but my friends wanted to get some energy drinks to stay up later. We took some from my friends sister and drank them. We comtinued to watch movies well into the night and we finally realized it was morning. I then stayed up for another full day and I finally crashed after I ate dinner the next night. I learned that drinking too many energy drinks is bad and that fitting in isn't always the right thing to do.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in kindergarten, I refused to wear anything but a twirly-skirt, which was the kind of skirt that would twirl around me as I spun around in a circle. This was a key component of my every shopping experience. I would make sure that the skirt twirled before I would ask my mom to buy it. I owned maybe one pair of leggings, which were strictly for going under twirly dresses. However, as my first year in Big Girl School progressed, I found that I was the only one wearing twirly-skirts. Every one of my peers had on jean shorts, and I soon detested my skirts. One girl in particular always wore jeans and I thought that it couldn't get any cooler than that.
ReplyDeleteSo I went home one day and started rumaging through my closet. I must have caused quite the ruckus because my mom poked her head through the door. She asked me what I was doing and I told her in a very matter-of-fact way that I wanted jeans. She was surprised, but we bought some anyways.
All I wanted was to be well liked by my critical six-year-old friends. If they didn't want any part of the twirly skirts, then why should I? While now I haven't the foggiest who a cool kid may be, I wear jeans almost every day. I prefer them to the twirly skirts of my past. I was young and easily impressed, but this impression has lasted years. It was completely out of character for me to wear anything but the skirt and now jeans are the only way to accurately depict my character. It's all because of those darn cool kids.
Throughout elementary and some of middle school, I was one busy girl. I was doing gymnastics, playing soccer, basketball, piano, violin, and learning Chinese. I hardly ever had time to hang out with my friends. As much as I enjoyed doing all of those extra curricular activities, I remember always being jealous of my friends when they had so much spare time and were always spending time with one another.
ReplyDeleteEventually, I was so envious of their laid-back lifestyle that I wanted it myself. I started to become lazy and I found myself not wanting to go to gymnastics or go to basketball practice even though, in the back of my head, I was truly enjoying it.
By the middle of 7th grade, I had quit half of the things and found myself with tons of spare time. More than I knew what to do with. The worse part was that I didn't even like it. After giving up what I actually enjoyed because I wanted to live like "everyone else", I wasn't even satisfied.
I have always been the kind of person that would never intentionally hurt another person, or make them feel bad about themselves. When i was in second grade, i was riding the bus to school and sitting next to one of my friends. Directly in front of us was one of my better friends and she had just gotten a super short hair cut. The girl i was sitting next to was not very fond of the girl's new hair and began to make loud, snide comments of how it looked horrible and nobody likes it and continuing on to bash my friend. I started out not saying much but as the hurtful words continued more kids started to pay attention and laugh with her. So i began to add my thoughts to the mix. It got so bad that when the bus turned into our school we were had every kid laughing hard while my friend was sitting with tears in her eyes. I had never felt so bad in my life when i saw her turn around and give me the saddest and most hurt look. To some it might just have been a moment of being human, and ones could say we all go through this at one point in our childhood; but to me it was so much more than that. I ended up going to my friends house and apologizing for the way that i acted. Sometimes it still haunts me and i can't seem to run away from the pain it caused me to see myself hurting another person.
ReplyDeleteI had always wanted to be an athlete. It was always my dream to be the star player, the one who got the ball passed to her, or the one who scored the final shot to win a big game. That’s what I worked for. In fourth grade, I joined the school basketball team. I went to practice, worked hard, and did whatever I could to become good. Our class was a competitive class, so it was never okay to be second best. Everyone was always fighting to be first. There were a lot of other girls on my team who were better than me, and everyone new it. They were natural athletes, where as I wasn’t. It was harder for me to learn how to shoot the ball then any of them. They would score ten points a game, I would score four points a season. I was never good enough, in my eyes, to play with them, and I wasn’t enjoying myself. I started to not want to go to practice, not to play “knockout” or “PIG” at recess, or do anything associated with basketball, but it was important for me to be accepted in the eyes of my friends, and teammates. So I came up with another way to fit in with the basketball team. I changed my entire image, and started to act like a basketball player. I dressed differently, talked differently, acted differently, and even ate differently. I no longer wore frilly dresses and bows, but rather basketball shorts and tee shirts. I started using slang, and saying words like “dude” all the time, until even I was sick of the word. I turned my image into one that I thought would make me look like an athlete to others, so that they would believe I fit in that crowd.
ReplyDeleteLooking back, I see how cultural anxieties, and the need to fit in the in-crowd changed the way I lived that school year. If it hadn’t been for the strong desire to be friends with the basketball team, I may have had different opportunities to shine in something I liked to do, not something that I felt I had to do. Culture can make a person do things that they wouldn’t normally do, because they feel that if they don’t do it, they won’t be excepted in society. When we aren’t afraid to be ourselves though, we find the best friends, and the most satisfaction in life.
I tend to think of myself as a fairly level headed person. When I am upset or angry I usually just keep things to myself, hiding my emotions from the outside world. When I was in 6th grade, my cousin and I had a huge argument. All the emotions that I had been hiding bottled over and suddenly, I became this mean, angry person. I remember yelling at her and saying things that I didn't mean just to hurt her feelings. I wasn't myself at all. This confrontation between my cousin and I really affected the relationship we had with each other. I know that everyone gets angry sometime or another, but to me this was out of character. I am usually a pretty happy, easy-going person. This was an instance where I acted out of character.
ReplyDeleteI'm usually a pretty quiet and level headed person, but one of the things I regret most in my life was the time me and my sister had a huge fight. We fight like most siblings, but we make up pretty quickly too, and then move on. But one time, we were fighting, and I dont even remember what we were fighting about, but it clearly pushed one of my buttons and I lost it. I started saying things that I really shouldnt have said and that I honestly didnt mean, but I said them. I didnt even realize it until afterwards, but I clearly hurt my sisters feelings, and it damaged our relationship. It took alot of apologizing and conversation for us to get back to our normal way of life. Ill regret it forever.
ReplyDeleteIn the second grade of my elementary school years, my parents decided that I would attend a budding charter school instead of returning to my small, neighborhood school. They chose this because my cousins would also be attending and with hopes that it would prove to be a beneficial experience.
ReplyDeleteI had always been somewhat of a free spirit. For example, I cut my cousin's hair as a toddler. This was a trait that my parents had come to understand and appreciate (when I was not cutting peoples' hair.) I am an artist and by that age I loved creativity and bringing beauty to a piece of paper.
During my first year at the charter school, my parents noticed my attitude was changing. I was one year behind in math and struggling with english, a class that had always been my strength. No longer did I want to go to school in the morning. I was miserable, failing, and constantly trying to be the student they wanted to teach. The free spirit in me had been silenced and my joy along with it.
At the conclusion of that year, my mom began to realize that these issues were not the result of my own choices or causing. People truly learn differently, she understood, and the charter school catered to a specific type of learner that I simply was not. The curriculum focused on perfection, uniformity, and progress. (All wonderful things, but I could not achieve them in their style.)
We changed schools again and the next became a home to me for the next three years of elementary school. My grades, success, and happiness bounced back to where I was entering the Gifted and Talented Program and giving my 5th grade 'commencement' speech.
During second grade, I compromised my need for beauty and originality. My mind and heart tried and failed to fit the opposite. Somehow, I know that year shaped me and eventually gave me freedom to be whoever it is that I am.
First, I had to be who I was not.
I like to think of myself as a friendly and kind person who tries to be nice to everyone. However, looking back on my life I can think of many times when I failed to live up to this perception of myself. I have let myself fall victim to “cultural anxiety” and this has often resulted in me doing some pretty cruel things.
ReplyDeleteOne such event took place in the middle of freshman year. In seventh grade a new kid came to my school. He was very nice and friendly, but was also rather “different” as he had some strange habits and acted rather awkwardly. Because of this, he had very few friends and almost everyone laughed at and made fun of him. I felt bad for him and so I tried to be as nice to him as I could. I would talk to him, hang out with him outside of school, text him and generally just try to be friendly and nice to him. Because of this he latched on to me and attempted to enter my group of friends. However they too disliked him and all made fun of him. Every day during lunch, he would sit at “our table” as he had nowhere else to go. My friends would then all cruelly berate him, making fun of him and telling him leave. I felt awful watching this, but I was too afraid of losing all of my friends to do anything, so I would silently sit by watching. After awhile, they started blaming me for attracting him to the table and began to look down on me because of this. This made me feel even worse so I started ignoring him at school and only talking to him via text message and outside of school.
Once we started high school last year, it became easier to ignore him. Still, one day he invited me to go see James Bond with him and his neighbor. I had already been invited to see it with my same group of friends, so I told him I couldn’t go and made up some excuse as to why. That night, I saw him at the movie. I initially tried to ignore him, but my friends all decided it would be funny to taunt him. They pressured me to do the same and so I did. I felt absolutely terrible as I could see the anger, pain and humiliation on his face. He never talked to me again after that… Looking back on this day I feel like a total jerk. I let peer pressure and cultural anxiety within my peer group influence me to do some terrible things. In many ways, this kid was really cool and nice and he and I shared a lot in common. Had it not been for this cultural anxiety, we might have even become good friends. Instead, I acted like a jerk. I lied to him, silently stood by while he was bullied and made fun of and ultimately betrayed him. I can only imagine the pain that I helped to cause him. I have learned a lot from this experience and I really hope if faced with this type of situation again I would behave differently.
Whenever someone meets me they know right from the start that I would never ever hurt an animal, I won't even wear fake fur unless I am forced to. Well when I was in the first grade I took a vacation bible school class and I was taught all about my religion. Well they told us about baptizing little babies so they can become a "good" Catholic. I decided that the only person in my family who wasn't Catholic was my guinea pig. Everyone else in my class was baptizing their dogs or cats and since I didn't have one I decide to baptize my guinea pig (now before you jump to conclusions I didn't hurt my guinea pig, he lived to be about 5 years old which in guinea pig years that really old). So, I came home and put my guinea pig in the bathroom sink and put maybe 5cm of water in the sink. However, the fact that I didn't know was that guinea pig are like cats, they don't like to get wet.
ReplyDeleteI guess you could say that I wanted to be like everyone else in my class, but I didn't realize that by doing that I would scare others.
Last year, I broke my finger right before tennis season started. When i went to practice, the other people started calling me "casty" due to the cast on my hand. Embarrassed and self- concious, I was worried and not focusing too well. And so, when we began to run for warm-ups, I promptly tripped onto the net, leading with my broken pinky. The pain was immediate, and intense. Unable to continue, and worried I had knocked the recently set finger out of place, I left. I think that was out of character for me because taunts do not usually affect me so. Since then I have not let a taunt interfere with my judgment.
ReplyDeleteI think of my self as a very quiet and sensible person. I tend to be someone who is not quick to anger or argue, as well. But like many other people, that all changes with my sister. Those who have met my sister know all ready that she is a very intense, even intimidating 11 year- old (she is a green belt in tae-kwan –doe). We both get in to very nasty fights. When I was in 7th grade, we where yelling at each other, and somehow for some reason I ended up punching her, giving her a bloody nose. This was not a good Idea since she was starting tae-kwan-doe that year, so she proceeded to beat me up. However, I will never forget that and how much I regret purposely hurting her. I think what caused me to punch her was the pressure of being the older sibling, wanting to have more power and control of my younger sister. I am not saying that this is the only reason I punched her, it might have been a subconscious thing. Either way it was way out of character and I will always regret doing that.
ReplyDeleteOne, time, a very long time ago, i had a sleepover at a friends house. He had a little toy that you got in a happy meal, that i thought was cool. So i stole it, when he wasnt looking. I guess it would fall into the category of always wanting to own the coolest thing, whether it be, i dont know, clothing, or other stuff, or even free little toys. Looking back, its rather funny, but i dont think i would do it again if i had the chance.
ReplyDeleteI specifically remember a time when I was with all my friends and we were just hanging out walking around. A few minutes after we left one of our friend's houses we met a kid that we didn't really like and we started to tease him. The teasing got more crass and more specific to that kid. After a while the group started to push the kid around and I joined in. Eventually we took his backpack and he was trying to get it back. Then I took it one step farther and threw it into the dumpster that we were next to. After awhile he jumped in and got it and we left, but I still regret what I did that day.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part I am a kid that follows most of the rules and does the right thing no matter what. However, there have been a couple of times that I have let my friends influence me and persuede me to do something out of character. The one thing that comes to mind most is a time when I was hanging out with frinds from youth group. Our youth group is one that tends to pull a lot of practical jokes on each other. One night we were out and we had been going from house to house T.P.ing others in the group, finally we got to the last house that we were going to hit that night. I don't really know what happened but all of the sudden things changed, we T.P.ed the house with about 550 roles of toilet paper, but then it just went down hill. We got our sunlotion and put it all over one of there cars(for you that don't know what this does, it pretty much destroys the paint job) then we got into the hood of the car and un-hooked the batery, and then finally we poured a liquid into the car through the open sunroof. Not to mention that we are a buch of church kids and some of the sunscreen on the car ended up looking like obscene things. Needless to say we for sure took the practical joke thing a little bit too far. It was just one of those things that you do in the moment and think it is the coolest thing. Afterward I felt horrible about it though.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I most regret doing happened towards the beginning of second semester freshman year. I like to believe that I am a kind and accepting person towards others but on this particular occasion I was anything but that type of person.
ReplyDeleteI had been talking to this girl for a few days because she had reached out to me through student council. She wanted to get involved with things going on with the freshman class and also just wanted someone to talk to because she had been struggling to find friends and fit in. She seemed like a nice girl who honostley wasn't trying to be annoying or weird and just wanted to be included. During the school week she texted me while I was with some friends and when they saw her name show up on her phone the all started laughing and making jokes about her and teasing me about why she was talking to me. I immediately became embarrassed and started talking badly about her, little did I know as I was walking down the hall talking about her with my friends and making jokes she was walking a few people ahead of me. She heard the entire conversation and confronted me about it that night. What made it so much worse was that instead of getting angry at me she was apologizing for wasting my time by talking to me, she said that she was sorry that she thought I was her friend and she wouldn't bother me again.
As I was writing this blog the girl I was so mean to last year actually wrote to me on Facebook. I got to talk to her and apologize for how I acted, she forgave me and I hope we can be friends. I'm not sure if you would call that coincedence or what but I admire her ability to forgive and I know now not to let the power of a group change my character.
When I was in fifth grade I too was the queen of the playground. But on this particular date I was feeling extra orniry. My friends and I were all swinging on the swingset in unison keeping a watchful eye on our playground and, of course, our crushes. When the time came that the most annoying and rude kid in our class came over to the swingset to bug us, I would have none of it. He was doing that think where he runs in front or behind your swing while you're in mid swing,annoying right? I know. He was taunting me,and his smirks were that that came straight from the devil himself. When he came past my swing again I twisted it up and timed it just perfectly so when he ran across I would hit him. Now, I didn't mean to hit him in the face,that just happened on its own. He was not too pleased. He cursed like a sailor, which is not something common to a fifth grade christian school girl. The teacher came over and we both were sent to the principel's office. He got a larger penalty than I because of the profain language, and I, well I wrote the principel a nice apology letter and claimed it was an accident. I got off the hook. I am not proud of lying and hurting this boy, but I will say at the time it felt good to actually hit that annoying,buzzing fly that hovered around my friends and I.
ReplyDeleteBen S
ReplyDeleteDuring elementary school me and my friends alex were the stud scholars. However as popularity conitinually rises it seems to have an effect on people that makes them increasingly mean and unsympathetic. This did indeed happend to me when i continually made fum of a loner at our school... i will not name any names, however. As time went on I continually harassed this young boy until e finally cracked and teased me. Once i fell into his shoes i realized how hurtful bullying can be. From that day on i have tried my best to always be sympathetic and kind to lonely kids.
As a kid I loved playing soccer, I would show up for every game with the mindset to win and to do my best. I was never the best player on my team but that did not change the fact that I tried really hard and wanted to succeed. But one year there was a new girl on our team who kept bragging about how good she was and how the last team she was on won tons of championships and awards, all the girls on my team were so impressed by her that I started to feel bad and jealous so I began say mean and untrue things about her behind her back. One day she found out what I had been saying and she confronted me about how much it hurt her to hear me say that. I saw a side of her that day I didn’t notice before and afterward I felt absolutely horrible about what I had done and realized that I had been doing things that were completely out of character for me.
ReplyDeleteGod, Hell, Wrath, and Nothing. In this set of words there seems to me to be an outlier. "Nothing" is out of place here, kind of. I thinkl that fear was the main motivator from this speech, but not of God or Hell or Wrath. I think they followed their lifestyle from fear there was Nothing. No God, Hell, or Wrath waiting for them, but Nothing. That seems to be their fear to me.
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