Thursday, November 29, 2012

What is this, I don't even....

There's a case where a man was sent to jail for a month because he mocked a 10 year old girl with cerebral palsy.

Okay, let's put aside for now the question of whether something like that rises to being an offense to be jailed for (arguably, it could fall under free speech, but then again it could fall under harassment and intimidation). And apparently the case is muddied by the fact that he alleges she called his son names, and apparently there's bad blood between the family. Let's put all of that aside and look at the man's actions.

Mimicking how a kid with CP walks - how they have to walk, because of their disability?

My only response to what this guy did is to use language I don't often use: That's a douchebag move. That's just....it seems so cowardly to me. It's low. It's not being a grown-up, but then we have no shortage of chronological grown-ups in this country who behave like spoiled children.

I don't care if she called his son names. There are some things that should be "off the table" when it comes to retaliation, and an ADULT making fun of a CHILD'S disability is one of them. (He has a disability himself, apparently: he's not smart enough or doesn't have enough common sense not to act like a jerk, at least in this situation).

I hope the girl involved realizes that this incident tells us far more about the character (or lack thereof) of the man than it does about her.

(Disclaimer: I was friends with a kid with CP when I was in junior high. Actually, I wound up sitting at the "disabled kids'" table at lunchtime - partly because the popular kids made it hard for us to sit anywhere else, even if we had wanted to split up, but partly because enough of the popular kids were (to use that term again) douchebags.)

I suppose this is also a lesson on parents getting too involved in their kids' disputes. You know what? I was called names ALL THE TIME as kids. In some cases my mom had to look them up in a slang dictionary because she didn't know what the "new" meanings of some of them were. And I remember her great consternation when some of my fellow classmates called me a "slut" (I was 10 and hadn't even held hands with a boy) and she went back to the dictionary to see if there was some other meaning than the one she knew. (There wasn't, and her conclusion was that the stupid girls heard the word from older kids, just knew it was an insult without knowing what it meant, and hurled it at someone who happened to be innocent of its charges). Kids can suck. Lots of little kids can be amazingly mean to others. We don't need adults - who should know better - sinking to that level.

What I've said before applies: If I had a kid, and there was any way on God's green earth I could manage it, I'd homeschool. To protect them from the stupid cruelty of other kids. And I guess, from some idiotic adults.

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