Tragic Sandwich

Tag: character

  • Schadenfreude

    I don’t indulge in it often. I think it’s mean. But every now and then, I just can’t help myself.

    Baguette’s school has a school-wide assembly every Monday. These take place while the kids are lining up with their teachers, which means that particularly for the younger grades, the parents are still there for the tail end of drop-off. They say the Pledge of Allegiance and have announcements. Sometimes there are awards. This makes me late to work, which means Mondays are a hassle, even for Mondays.

    Sometimes there are additional assemblies. Last week, they had one on Monday, one on Tuesday (to talk about Veterans Day) and another on Friday (for a presentation about Diwali). Mind you, school was closed on Veterans Day, so that week there were four days of school and three assemblies.

    Apparently that wasn’t enough, because today was their first Character Day, focusing on “trustworthiness.” All the kids were asked to wear blue. And there was an assembly.

    Turns out that the Character Day assemblies are run by one of the parents who has volunteered to teach the kids about character. She talked a little about friendship and kindness and honesty, and then a group of students came out to perform a dance that involved sitting in chairs, shaking hands, and something about waving flashlights around in the daytime.

    She directed the dancing students to run over to a bucket, where they grabbed handfuls of something and threw them into the crowd of students.

    The “something” was candy. The big idea was to throw candy into a crowd of elementary school students.

    Pandemonium ensued.

    She tried to get everyone back to their places, saying, “I got it, I got it.” One of the teachers came up to her, and she said, “I got it, everyone’s yelled at me already, I got it”–into the microphone she was holding.

    And then, somehow, she found a way to blame the students for their lack of self-restraint and telepathy.

    I kind of want to volunteer to teach the kids about critical thinking in daily life. My first lesson will be on “Predictable Disasters.”

    It might even help with their telepathy.

    Mr. Schadenfreude by “Roger Hargreaves”

  • Bigotry

    I don’t like any of its forms, but one that particularly incenses me is bias based on weight. I know all kinds of people who think it’s perfectly fine to judge character based on weight. Which you just can’t. Recently I came across a terrific essay by Charlotte Cooper on images of people who are overweight, and it’s definitely worth reading. Take a look at those pictures, and ask yourself this: What do these photos and the way they’re commonly used tell you? And while you’re at it, ask yourself what’s harder–sitting next to a person who’s obese, or being obese?

    All that weight tells you is whether someone is fat or thin. It doesn’t tell you whether someone is kind or cruel, generous or stingy, honest or a liar. It doesn’t tell you whether they’re going to cut you off in traffic or pull over to see if you need help when someone else does. It doesn’t tell you whether they’ll say something deliberately mean to you, or remind you that the person who did is a jackass who’s not worth your time.

    Weight tells you nothing but weight. And that’s not the measure of a person.

  • I Am Somebody

    Candy Hearts: Love

    When I was young, I would see commercials for RIF: Reading Is Fundamental. The ad showed a bookmobile arriving in a neighborhood, and a child (I think a boy, but it’s been a while) would select a book with the title “I Am Somebody!”

    This weekend, I took Baguette to the mall. Toddlers need to toddle, but not outside when it’s 104 degrees in the shade. At one point, I glanced into a store filled with tween clothes and saw a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Future Mrs. Bieber.”

    Now, I have no real issue with Justin Bieber. He seems to fit in with the same Tiger Beat/Teen Beat pop stars that I remember from my own childhood, also of great appeal to the tweener age group.

    And I believe that a good marriage is a good thing. Mr. Sandwich and I put each other first and consider our marriage to be something that we both contribute to (one of my co-workers once said, “It’s not even like they’re married. They’re a team, like Batman and Robin”–I’m not sure I’d pick that prototype, but I appreciate the sentiment).

    But that shirt just made me angry. Because what it says to me is, “I don’t need my own identity as long as I’m someone’s wife.” And that is not what I want to teach Baguette. It’s not what I want to teach anyone’s daughter.

    Mr. Sandwich and I want Baguette to love herself just as she is, and believe that she has intrinsic human value. We want her to feel confident in her own worth, not feel that she gains importance based on who decided to tolerate her presence. So the question for us is: how do we do that?

    I think we do that the way we teach her everything else: by telling her outright, and modeling behavior. For me, that means accepting and loving myself just as I am, so that as her first female role model (and as her mother, that’s exactly what I am), I present an example of love, compassion, strength, and self-confidence. I know I’m not a supermodel, but I’m far from a troll. Are there things I would change about myself and my appearance? Sure, but I don’t think that those things make me a lesser human being. I know very well that appearance is literally the surface of who we are, and I believe that character is much more–and much more important–than size or shape.

    I know a lot of women who are distressed by their stretch marks after giving birth. I have them, and while it’s not like I jumped up and down for joy when they appeared, I also have suffered not one moment of anxiety that they exist. I always expected to get them–and they’re a natural after-effect of having a child. And beyond that, they show where Baguette used to live. So while it would be nice to have a smooth, flat stomach, I absolutely would not trade the one I have.

    I hope that if I accept myself and my human imperfections, it will be easier for Baguette to do the same. Because I don’t want her to consider herself the “future Mrs. Anybody.” I’d much rather she think, “I Am Somebody!”

    Photo by SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent), via Flickr.