Speak Up!

While wandering through the recent posts on my classmates' blogs, I found the following on Karisa's blog, and it is my [insert appropriate adjective] opinion that this perfectly demonstrates exactly why the ASTI Constitution should be followed:

Whenever she was mean to another girl, they [my friends] would do the same thing. Sometimes i wouldn't hang out with them and I'd just talk to my other friends, but then they would get mad at me for "ignoring" them. It was like they didn't even understand that they could be really mean sometimes. When this happened i kind of felt like I shouldn't have been the nice one and befriended her. It seemed like i was the only one who actually tried to be this girls' friend and then she just turns all of my friends into these mean girls.
I had about three options in this situation. I could have either confronted all of them and told them that i didn't like how they were acting, just stopped being friends with them, or i could've just kept on pretending that nothing was wrong. I knew that if i did the first two, I would probably have a group of girls hating me and not wanting to talk to me because of an issue that didn't really involve them. So, unfortunately i stuck with the third option and continued to pretend like nothing was wrong.

To my mind, this is the reason people need to practice that part of the ASTI Constitution which tells us to "speak up for yourself and others". In this situation, it is certainly a possibility that confronting the "mean girls" (both the original aggressor and the other friends) would lead to conflict and the losing of friends; however, there is equal possibility that it will not. One should grasp the possibility of the issue being resolved peacefully and talk to whoever is causing the problem, and if this doesn't improve the situation, then it may be necessary to stop being friends with these people.

And here we have another issue: if your friends are willing to start being mean to other people just because one person they know is doing so, and if they get mad at you when you avoid the bullying or try to stop it--are you sure they're really your friends? Are they good friends? Maybe the first step is to point out that they should stop being mean to other people and that that's why you, as Karisa says, are "ignoring" them; if they just blow you off and say...I don't know, something that indicates that they have no intention of stopping, then that is the point when you probably should go and find some new friends.

Finally, I must point out that the line of the ASTI Constitution I am trying to demonstrate says that you should "speak up for yourself and others". That means that when your friends (or another group of people you may know) decide to go and bully someone or other and you don't like what they're doing, it is important to bring up the fact that you have a problem with what is being done. Again, this will almost certainly require a confrontation, but don't you think it's at least sort of worth it to make a contribution to stopping bullying?

(Please note that this post is not intended as a criticism of any person of my acquaintance, and that it is simply my response to something that was said.)

Unfinished Writing Vol. 1: The Time of the Plus

An explanation: In my spare time, I write fiction, mostly fantasy but also some reality-based stories, although those are becoming a minority. I tend to have a lot of little bits of writing sitting around that I won't finish for a while, or possibly ever, but often people tell me they should be continued because they're good (a nicely nonspecific term). So...if anyone's interested, and until I get a reprimand, I think I'll be sticking it here.

The Time of the Plus: The time in Metronium when all the clocks stop, new buildings suddenly appear where none were before, the Sternix reappear, and the Plus herself comes into power. Once well-known among Metronians, this legend has faded from the minds of all but a few.

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They say Metronium was where the first clock was made.
They say the Chronometris spoke to a maker of machines, and whispered to him the secret of clockwork, and guided his hand in the building of it; that She gave him precise instructions for the construction of the clock; that, when it was finished, She examined it and found all things as She had wished them to be. They say She then selected from the toymakers and those good with machines the six who were to be the first clockmakers; and that She set the first clock above the Hall in Metronium's capital city, and decreed it to be the standard all future clockmakers would aspire to. So they say, who say such things.

Of course, all that business was hundreds or maybe thousands of years ago, if it ever happened at all. But Metronium remained the land of clocks, as the foreigners call it, and over the years its capital city of Tique grew into a massive sprawl littered with clockmakers and running much like clockwork, at least in the higher government functions.

And, according to tradition, the clock which is said to be the first clock sits in its niche in the roof of Tique's Hall, and is always kept in working order. The country sets its watch by that clock.

Odd Girl Out

I am the odd girl out.

It begins around third grade, the differentiation between "popular" and "unpopular", "cool" and "uncool". Up until then you're allowed to be whatever you want to be and do whatever you want to do. But in third grade, it starts.

If you're privileged enough to be one of the cool kids, you don't notice the changes because for you there aren't any changes. Suddenly there's someone new to be mean to, maybe, if you're so inclined. That's all. But the outcasts and the oddballs are in a perfect position to observe the social tide. And you'd better believe we noticed the difference. All of our friends may have turned against us, unless we had none to begin with.

I was one of the uncool kids, in third grade, and my friends were quite emphatically not. They drifted away slowly, and I don't think I really noticed it until I approached one of them one day, and one of the girls I had always classified as "nasty" asked me smarmily, "Who said you could come here?" And it was all over.

We moved many times, and many times I changed schools. But it was always the same; I was an outcast because I liked dragons, or because I read voraciously outside of school, or for any number of other silly, frivolous reasons. I like to think that this made me a fierce individualist, as indeed it has, but it went quite a ways toward undermining my self-esteem and turning me into, well...the one who squeaks and runs away.

And this is the result of endless bullying from which there is no feasible escape.

You ask me why people bully others. I'll tell you: it's because it makes them feel better about themselves. Yes, it really is; your parents are correct for once. Something causes someone to feel bad about his or herself, and they take it out on someone else because it makes them feel better. Sometimes it becomes a habit. And there is another key here: all of the bullied must thereby also be a bully to someone at some point.

Yes, I've done this, although I am far from proud. I can be very, very nasty when I put my mind to it, when I think someone deserves it. And if I regret it afterward, does that make it okay somehow? It does not. Bullying is a vicious cycle. Many bullies were once bullied themselves.

And the only way to escape the cycle is to refuse to let yourself be affected. Very few people can manage that. But eventually, perhaps, enough of them will change things for the better.