Mean Girls

My nephew is the coolest little dude I know. I am not just saying this because I love him. He is funny and creative. But I was just as perplexed as he was when he walked in my room moping because his friend in his kindergarten class, we will call her G1, called him ugly! My heart sank. He looked so sad, and I was furious. First of all, he is not ugly! Second of all, I was triggered. I had the same face all the way through high school when my peers would say something mean about me. He then said he didn't want to go to school because of it which really pissed me off! We all know the stats: if little Black boys don't develop a love for school early, they will probably drop out before finishing. I couldn't stand the thought of it! 

"You are not ugly," I assured him. He looked like he believed me about as much as I believed my grandma when she would tell me I wasn't ugly. He probably was thinking what I used to think which was, "If I am not ugly, why would they say I am?" I explained to him that some people say mean things and that he should not let what they say get to him because what they say isn't true. I could tell he wasn't buying it. 

Then, just yesterday morning, I put out his new outfit for him to wear to school that he was excited about. Yet, after he put his pants on, he was not happy. 

"I don't want to wear these," he complained. 

"Why not? They are new!"

"G2 made fun of my other pants," he said, shoulders slumped. 

All of a sudden, it was 1992 again, and I was sitting in class trying not to hear the kids laughing at the clothes that I had on and again, I was furious!

"No one is going to like my pants!" he whined. 

"It is not about if everyone else likes your clothes, it is about if you like your clothes," I told him, stuffing him into his coat to go to the bus stop. Wow. That one was one of my grandma's greatest hits. 

Then I thought about my mother. She was always encouraging me to be tough and stand up for myself, and I just wasn't. Eventually, as much as I loved school, I hated to go. Hated the way I looked. Hated being seen. And when that got overwhelming, I became just as mean as everyone else.

As dramatic as it may sound, bullying is a big reason why I didn't want kids. I didn't want to have a kid that would just be a punching bag for the other kids, or worse, be the kid that was doing the punching. Bullying was a HUGE part of my childhood that I didn't want my kid to experience to the point that I didn't want one at all. Now here is my 5-year-old nephew, learning about the sting of cruelty as we have raised him with love and kindness. It's not fair!

"Tell him, 'F$ck dem kids!" P suggested. As crazy as that would be for a child to say to another child, it was honestly what I was thinking and what I have gone back and told childhood me as she got roasted on the playground by obnoxious little a-holes. 

I think that I am going to call his teacher. This is something that neither my grandma nor mother would have done. But there has to be a middle ground between being too passive and being too harsh. For me, I feel like that is adult intervention. I'm not going to let the kids burn my nephew's self-esteem as they did mine so many years ago. 

Finding Cameron

I found my kindergarten/ 1st grade crush on Facebook! Well, I didn't really find him. He popped up as a friend suggestion. I don't know what made me pay attention to the suggestion. I usually ignore them because I NEVER know who Facebook says I should but there he was: Cameron. 

I went through his page with my stalker hat on, trying to figure out what he has been up to all these years. He isn't that consistent of a Facebook poster, but from what I could tell, he has had a good life. He graduated from an HBCU. He is a Sigma. I don't know what he does for a living, but he looks like success. The only thing annoying on his page is that he has a girlfriend and it looks like they do workouts together. Gross. 

Seeing that he had not posted anything in months, I decided to send him a friend request, not expecting him to respond. He accepted it a second later, and since then (which was Monday morning), I have been in a state of euphoria. 

Come with me on my mental spaceship to 1990, East Point, Georgia. I was obsessed with edible bracelets and glow in the dark scrunchies. I had a serious addiction to Fruit Rollups, and I was majorly crushing on the boy that sat beside me in class. His name was Cameron, and his voice was high and his laughter was loud and sounded like he was singing. His head and face were always shiny, like his mom put oil on his hair and then rubbed the rest of it over his face. I actually know that is what happened because my grandma did that to me all the time. He was mischievous, but he wasn't bad. He just liked to do little annoying things that got him sent to time out. And he had slits in his eyebrows. Child. I am into men today with eyebrow slits! 

Looking at his page, I realized that I have been into the same type of guy my whole life, which further feeds into my feeling that you are who you are when you are born and do very little evolving as you get older. The cards are dealt from the jump. Okay. I am starting to babble. The point is I recently came across the man named Cameron, smiling and being lighthearted on social media, and I can totally see why I was into him when I was a child. Just thought I would share.