Words Can Cut Deeper Than the Sharpest Knife

I have written in this blog before about the car accident I was in when I was 11. The reason I am talking about it again is something that happened to me because of the accident. I was permanently marked that night. The smooth, olive skin of my forehead was ripped to shreds by exploding glass. My eyelid was sliced in half, and the bottom of my nose was almost falling off. How does a surgeon even begin to piece something like that together? They do the best they can, and in my case, they used over 100 stitches. As you can imagine, skin that heals from 100 stitches is heavily scarred which brings me to the point of why I am writing this. The following year when I entered 6th grade, I received a note passed to me in class one day. It was a crude drawing of a stick figure, with a large head. All over the face of the figure were "Frankenstein-like" stitches and the word Scarface was written on the note. It had been passed to me by one of the boys in the class. I hadn't provoked it. I hadn't treated him badly in any way. In fact, I barely knew him, but for some reason he felt the need to tease me about something that was beyond my control. I remember acting like it didn't bother me. You see, I had an attitude then of "I'll show him. He's not going to make me cry." I did show him by showing the note to my teacher, who then showed it to my principal. The boy was suspended from school and was made to apologize to me. I often wonder how I would have gotten through all of that and the many years of teasing that would follow as I endured surgery after surgery if I hadn't had that "I'll show them" attitude.

In the last month 3 young boys have committed suicide because they were constantly teased and harassed for being different, something beyond their control and one college student because someone chose to reveal to the world that he was gay over the Internet. I am sick and tired of hearing the excuse of "kids will be kids" or "kids can be cruel" THERE IS NO EXCUSE!!! for bombarding another human being with taunts and name calling day after day after day. I don't have a solution, but I do know that all we can do is love our children every day, and teach them to respect everyone, and to never do anything that would cause someone hurt or pain. We teach them that it is wrong to physically harm people, but if we don't start teaching them the damage they can do with their words, we are lost.