Just a short half-mile east of my small,
rural hometown of Onaga, KS, the Vermillion River flows southward to its
meeting with the much larger Kansas River.
During the summer between grades seven and eight, this spot was a
frequent playground for me, my classmate and best friend, Joe Woods, and Neil
Kolterman, one year younger.
Joe had a small canoe with which we played
the watery version of “King of the Mountain.”
On one outing Neil brought a two-foot-long model of a pirate ship he had
built from a kit. The ship, named the
Black Swan, was black and red, even the sails.
But Neil’s hand painting on one sail had spelled out Black Sawn.
My memory is that Joe and I teased Neil
about the misspelling to where he developed hard feelings. My involvement in that teasing incident is
just one of a list of words and actions I sincerely wish I could undo. Since such episodes never can be erased, it
is important that, beyond a sincere apology, something be learned from each
transgression that lessens the chance for poor judgment to happen again. We must focus upon what we can do after what
we did that cannot be undone.
I
have learned that the world of tease stands on glass shards. To tease is to flirt with hurt, to threaten the
shield that guards the tenderness inside another, a shield whose thickness we
cannot gauge until too late. But my
mouth, without conscious malice, has sometimes fired hurtful darts into fragile
soil. Learning both to control my playful tongue and to better understand
others have been life-long challenges for me.
I do feel, through the years, that I have
acquired more perspective and tongue control, but not soon enough for those
that I, in supposedly good-natured fun, have stung with my wayward whiplash
words.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t end with
me. This human trait plays in many venues. In addition to real-life interpersonal
interactions, television sit-com shows are a prominent example. When young, our daughter, Laurel, and her
friends loved getting home from school, robbing the munchie drawer, and
watching “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Roberts” before going to the basement to
play.
But a time came in second or third grade
when Laurel began to speak of a particular so-called comedy sitcom TV show her
friends enjoyed. Trying to be reasonably
normal and indulgent parents, we three watched this new show two or three times,
and we withdrew permission. The show storyline was primarily a constant string of put-downs of one person by
another.
A couple of other sit-coms Imogene and I sampled
had basically the same format. So much
for that! But I wonder how many people
now reflect some of that acidic sitcom style in their everyday speech patterns
and in interactions with others. Studies
have shown that violence and aggression on TV do affect the behavior of some
viewers.
Some would defend such shows by arguing
that children need to be exposed, toughened up, and prepared for the real
world. But is a conversation filled with
put-downs really a healthful reality? Is
such negativity, such calculated destruction of another’s presence, a
constructive route to toughening up one’s persona for the real world?
Neil’s pirate ship was the subject of a
brief session of ridicule, but Joe and I soon realized that the words
“Black Sawn” were the work of earnest hands that had wrought a transgression
not even remotely capable of causing a ripple in the space/time continuum. We soon realized our mistake and that we
needed to anoint those hands with the balm of apology.
-- Elder RiverSoul
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