- Kids -

Yeah, only a negligent parent would let their kid become a jock.

Posted by: Gideon Hallett ( UK ) on April 29, 1999 at 11:10:17:

In Reply to: What else would you expect? posted by Shaun on April 29, 1999 at 10:22:48:

: If you are a parent who allows your boys to wear makeup and nail polish, listen to heavy metal, wear only black all the time and admire Hitler you are inviting trouble.

Well, I've done pretty much all of those things apart from admiring Hitler. While those kids were *not* normal, the fucked-up system that spawned them wasn't exactly normal either.

Have you ever been shunned at school for not wanting to be a jock; for not wanting to play football because you can't see the point?

Have you ever been attacked for not wanting to behave like an animal, for not wanting to be lewd and abusive to women?

Have you ever been ridiculed because you liked reading books instead of going out and getting drunk?

Did you get this at school?

Did the teachers then take the side of the people who were bullying you; because they were "normal"; because they were good at sports and won praise for the school on the sports field?

"Normality" sucks. Plain and simple. It's a mechanism that converts creative children into TV fodder.

Is it any wonder that kids that get this treatment start to detest their tormentors?

While it's not sane to blow your classmates away, it's not impossible to see where the madness starts; a need to revenge yourself on your bullies; to even the scores up a bit.

: Too many parents these days are too afraid to give thier kids a kick in the ass when they need it.

Far too many of them are only too ready to impart their narrow-minded intolerance to their kids; a total refusal to permit any departure from the "normal" behaviour. These kids then go to school and practice the same attitudes; leading to persecution of anyone who doesn't conform.

Faggots, niggers, punks, Goths; all of these outsiders get the persecution full on. For daring to be different to nice, "normal" WASP North America. Years of physical and mental abuse. In a country with gun laws as lax as the USA, this is a recipe for someone finally deciding to do something about it. Need I point to the results?

: Is it any wonder why so many kids in this country are the way they are? Don't blame TV, the internet or anything else. Put the blame where it belongs-bad (or no) parenting.

On whose part? The parents who didn't notice that their kids were being tormented, or the parents who were quite happy for their kids to do what they damn well pleased, - because the US is "the land of the free" and those faggoty little trenchcoat-wearing punks just couldn't take a joke...

I'm speaking here as someone who was bullied for being different - for seven years. For being quiet and intelligent and respectful of women and not bragging or threatening to beat the shit out of people I didn't like.

When you've had 500 people wanting you to fuck up, just so that they can laugh at you and make your life miserable, you acquire a bit of understanding for those kids and what they went through. Yes, there are times when I've hated my former schoolmates; looked down on them as mental fungus doomed to become servants of the state.

Fortunately, I made it through alive; I grew well over six foot tall and flattened anyone who actually tried anything physical; including a guy who pulled a knife on me in the dinner queue. I'm just glad I got the lucky breaks there; had I been small, things would have been much worse.

(I also lived in the UK; where we don't have guns to any significant degree.)

And now, I'm a pacifist vegetarian twentysomething Goth; I still wear black for preference and listen to Gothic music. I work with computers and live in London, when some of my class are stuck in McJobs and live back in the town I came from. I reckon I won, if the term is apt. Yet I can see how close to the edge I came at school.

And I'm not going to condemn two kids who strayed over that edge into madness. Remember; they're dead as well.

Gideon.



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