People Tell You Who They Are

I was having a conversation this morning with someone about a young person in my life who I wish would stop having a relationship with another young person. It's so clear to me, I kept saying, what Young Person B is. How can Young Person A not see it? But I earned my knowledge.  I know who people are because I spent years completely clueless about seeing people for what they really were.  And I had to make much bigger mistakes than Young Person A has thus far made to get to this point.

Someone told me years ago, "People tell you who they are.  Listen." This became my personal mantra. Maybe too much so.  The other day one of my oldest daughter's friends was behaving in a way I thought was inappropriate.  "Geez, she's rude," I said to my daughter when the other girl was gone.  OK, I may have said it as she was walking away.  Even fifth graders are not wholly protected from my wrath.
"No, she's actually not, Mama," my daughter told me. "She's just tired."

Maybe my daughter's right. Maybe she knows more than I do-- it's happened before. Maybe I've used my mantra for evil instead of good sometimes in my life. I do tend to make snap judgments about people.  Luckily, I'm a solitary soul, and I keep a small circle. This will probably never change, but I do notice myself having to revise my decisions about people after I've made really quick judgments, then took the time to watch them operate.

People tell you who they are.  Listen. I've applied this to myself. I've tried to operate in the world in a way that tells people who I am, good and bad. With mixed results.  People sometimes tell me that they were scared of me before they got to know me.  Actually, one of my students wrote that in an assessment of my teaching and classroom. "At first I thought she was mean..." it gets better after that, I promise. I do have a protective bubble, both in my body language and my actions. "Grrrrr," it says.  "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr." I try to let it down, but I'm a solitary girl. Growling at people, whether vocally (only one or twice), or physically, helps keep me isolated.  And I like isolation in a lot of ways. I like to be alone.

People can change (ugh-- that phrase).  I know because I've changed. I've seen other people change. But sometimes that change changes more than I intended.  It's like I had to run through a fire to get out of things I should never have been in.  And in order to run through that fire I had to don some protective clothing.  It's heavy, and there's a lot of crap involved--helmets, socks, gloves. And it worked so well to get me through the fire I figured, why take it off at all? Just keep it on in case another fire springs up.

Sometimes I try to make my kids wear the fire clothes.  But they don't see a need, which is a good thing. Sometimes when I'm with them I feel like a body guard-- I'm always watching the people around us, the traffic, the weather, them. It's a relief when they're at school, because my watch is over.  Except it's not, because even when they're at school it's in my head-- my charges are on the loose.  This morning we were talking about school being a safe place on the drive to said school.

"Mama, did you know you can get expended for bringing a toy weapon to school?" my eight year old asked.

"I did know that.  School is a safe place-- no weapons, no hitting, you can't even talk about violence.  Your school is a safe place."

"But it's not," she said. "Because a kid got expended for bringing a toy to school."

"Your school is safe-- that's why they suspended him, because he broke the safe school rules." She seemed satisfied, but I was not.  I pulled into the parking lot thinking about the possibility of doing some sort of search of the classmates-- just a pat down, nothing too scary.

"What do you do if someone hits you, though?" my daughter asked.

I hate this question.  The right answer, of course, is "don't ever hit anybody first, but if they hit you, WHOOP their motherfucking ass. Don't stop until that kid is bleeding.  Then call me, and I'll kick the little fucker." But I'm not allowed to say that. So I say, "You tell a teacher.  We never hit. If you hit someone, you'll be in big trouble. School is a safe place."

And they got out and went into their safe school with the little weapon-carrying violent sociopath kids. And I drove off, resisting the urge to follow them in and glare at any seven year old who looked askance at my daughters. I just can't help myself. People tell you who they are. I'm the kind of person who hits first, at least in my heart, as much as I try to resist it in my person. My dad used to say, "I'm going to kick ass now and take names later" (in reference mostly to punishing all five of us for something maybe one of us did. Seriously. He'd line us all up and we'd all get it with the belt.  I was ten years younger than the oldest kids.  Do you really think it was ME you asshole?). Maybe that's my manta, really. I kick ass now and take names later.