The Dunce Cap

I wore one once.

Relate?

As I said I once had to don a dunce cap...

I had a dentists appointment, so I had to take a day off from school.

I was supposed to bring in a note to tell the teacher why I was not at school. I told my mother and she told me my father brought the note into school the day before.

The teacher asked where the note was and I said we had a substitute teacher the day before maybe he left the note with her. So the teacher went out and called the substitute teacher to confirm my story. The substitute teacher said my father brought in no such note. So the teacher called me a liar in front of my class, placed a dunce cap on my head and set me up in from of the whole class so they could ridicule me. That was third grade...

I learned of lies before I even thought to tell one.

You are not the only one to have been unfairly treated by a teacher, Rex.

Sorry for your hurt, but isn't it time to move on?

Why "move on" when elements of the world are still just as cruel and unkind? Why forget to only let their abrasive manner and hateful "tags" slap me in the face while I am unaware or naive? Fifth grade taught me never to be peaceful and content in just living life.

hmmm...*

7th grade is about when I learned that the world was full of bigger, meaner, nastier kids than me, and I needed to know when to fight and when to know better.







* ~ (see things that make you go hmmm)

Because then you let them 'win' in the sense that they have influenced or taken control over how you feel and react.

If you know that someone is mistaken or actively trying to interpret your actions wrongly - and you try to explain - but they don't want to hear it - it's easiest to figure it's their loss. Don't take that **** on yourself and let it influence in a toxic way how you exist in the world. If you do - you give them too much power.

yep, when we let idiots and evildoers hobble us we do our fellow man a disservice. We should pick our battles, take on only as much of that crap as we can handle, without it getting in the way of us being the best that we can be.

Amen.

I have to ask the obvious question.

Did you ask your father if he had indeed brought the note?

If he had, did you parents not approach the teacher about this?

If they did, did that not give the teacher a lesson?

What could i do, I was a fourth grader with a dunce cap on my head... From that day on I was marked by fate in the eyes of my classmates. They knew not to either befriend me or vex me, but they also learned never to love me openly.

my father forgot the note but my mother, this was the only time she stood up against any teacher of mine. Once the teacher realized her mistake she began to cry and hugged me. .. but, the dye had been cast.

Rex - if they love you, they love you. Why would you want the love of someone who didn't have the courage to love you openly?

young children respond mostly to peer pressure so from that time on I was untouchable. Kinda like I am here on a2k. I guess it is my fate and lot in life. Although I am an independent spirit and as and artist, I really sought to please god with my art (what is so bad about that) it did not change the way they as a pack behaved.

when no one loves you openly anymore you take what you can get.

If you believed what they made you feel you were - and that was untouchable- I'm not going to argue that that wouldn't influence how you dealt with people on a day to day basis and may have resulted in certain reactions from people that reinforced your belief, influenced your behavior and resulted in an unfortunate cycle..

And I'm not going to try to minimize the damage that can be done to a young child's instinctive thoughts of him or herself by people. I won't even try to minimize how what seems to be a commonly arrived at consensus can make an adult feel about him or herself- especially if he or she is different from the mainstream culture in one way or another.

But all I can tell you is that if you believe in what you are and what you do -
you can overcome all that.
A misinformed pack is nothing in the face of a strong individual who knows and believes in what he knows is true about himself, and has the courage to be that.

beautiful words Adian, maybe now you know why I am rexred.

well, that was a missed opportunity for you.

A fellow human being admitted their mistake and did their best to make amends, and you shunned her.

Instead, you are chose to be bitter about something the other was truly sorry for.

Of course, you were a child at that time, and might not have been able to appreciate that, but you've been an adult a long time, and apparantly have missed out on much in your life over an incident in your past.

Have you never done another wrong, then asked for forgiveness?

It's a pity how much has been wasted on something from so long ago.

That's all I have to say about that.

oh please.

don't worry about me, I'll just sit in the corner and die.

rex, I don't even think I've come across you that much in the time I've been posting her, under the name chai, or chai2.

you certainly aren't an untouchable to me, but apparantly you do enjoy feeling sorry for yourself. You're just a person, just like me, just like anyone else.

move on.