Doing things a little Different

Autism Fact (for April 14th): Dogs have been shown to improve autistic children's quality of life, independence and safety.



Hello Everyone!

Thank you for stopping by. 
*drawing info at the bottom
I am very glad to be taking part of RJ's blog hop for Autism awareness. It's something that is near and dear to my heart for many reasons because there are multiple people in my family along the spectrum.
Now the theme for this year's hop is PREJUDICE, and I'm sure there will be/has been a gambit of blogs about all the different kinds of bigotry in one form or another.

What I wanted to talk about what subtle bigotry, bullying or prejudicial remarks. I caution the post kind of meanders a bit, but I hope you get my point.
It's often the small remarks that can get overlooked and build over a period of time until certain prejudices are ingrained into us before we know it.

Some are easier to see than others, especially when violence is involved. But some biases are more subtle and harder to pinpoint because they aren't outright attacks or the attacks are deemed 'socially justified'.
The kid who gets teased because he's fat. Or the one who gets pushed around or tripped the locker room because he's just effeminate enough for people to think he's gay. Or the snide remarks heard about the slutty girl who had sex at such and such a party over the weekend. Or when a bus full of kids throw food at the one Muslim girl in the back.

Those were all things I was confronted with and had to deal with. All of them uncomfortable but I couldn't just look away. That's not how I was taught.
Often when people are confronted with these kind of situations, they try to avoid it. It's uncomfortable and, especially when we're younger, it's hard to know how/when to step in because of fear and peer pressure. Now I'm not saying everybody does because we wouldn't have 'heros' or 'activists' and so forth if everyone did - but a lot of people do. 
A lot of us do stupid things when we're kids, it's part of growing up. Awareness and upbringing can help curb these kinds of acts, but they still happen and there are still bystanders who watch instead of defend. 

There is actually a name for that: it's called the Bystander Effect .
People can get angry and complain and say 'how can people do that?' We are all taught rights and wrongs, and most of us have a pretty good idea once we hit a certain stage in developed as we're growing up where we know whether or not we're going to get in trouble if we do something. So why makes waves when we don't have to?

I can remember once when I was about six saying I didn't eat all the raspberries off the plants out back. I had, but there was no way I was going to admit to it if I didn't have to.

Too bad I got sick as a dog. Definitely learned my lesson though.

But then there's the next level, the one around junior high or high school (sometimes sooner) when we begin to notice the inconsistencies and the double standards that the adults have but don't tell us about. We notice them treating a person with certain clothing one way while someone else is treated another - the same thing can be said for skin color, sexual orientation and even hobbies. This means we're getting mixed messages about what is right, and some of us get angry while others of us are left to figure out what the adults really mean.

For me, this was a stage where I was glad my parents didn't give me mixes messages like I saw from my friends get. My parents always said this is how you treat people no matter what which is what my grandparents taught to them.



I can honestly remember getting into high school and being confused as to why someone would get picked on because they were gay. I had cousins who had two moms and no one  in my family ever treated the relationship any differently than the heterosexual ones. No one told me it was wrong so it never occurred to me to think that it was. I used to walk with a friend to class every day and when I got to the English class we'd kiss. Not the sticking our tongues down each other's throats kind but a peck on the lips and a hug. I honestly didn't know it would mean people would talk about me. When some girl came up to me and tapped me on my shoulder and when I turned around her response was 'I thought so,' I became confused until my friend explained it to me. I asked if we should stop but the response I got was 'You do things differently, everybody knows that.'


Those words hurt.

Because they disregarded a lot of things. 'You do things different' - like that was an explanation in of itself. Like it made everything okay. But what it pointed out was that people saw me as 'odd' or 'weird', and that I wasn't 'normal'.

I smiled and shrugged it off, but always in the back of my head, I wondered whether or not I was being normal. I went about doing the things I liked and enjoyed them, but there were times there were snickers or comments of 'only you', and instead of me feeling proud like I do today, I felt dirty and wrong. 

I was an impressionable youth, and I was given the impression I was a weird and it was bad. 

Now I glory in my weirdness and am more comfortable in my skin. When people say 'only you', I smile. I hold the people close to me that appreciate my many talents, but at 14, it's a whole lot harder knowing you're the one people are noticing but not really wanting the attention. It's even harder to bring it up to your own parents. Mine had told me the same thing over and over again, so I knew what the response would be. 

When we were adolescents, still at a vulnerable age, we were trying to be adults but don't always have the know how. When left to our own devices, you don't know what kind of mixed bag you're going to get.

A little guidance, a kind word, a talk can go a long way in helping figure it out. Sometimes it can comes from unsuspecting places. As teens, we didn't always get those and sometimes we just didn't always listen. But to have the option, to know someone really cares when they talk - that makes a huge difference. It can help take the fine line of what is right or wrong and put it back into focus.

Honesty does, too. Knowing someone will say, 'yeah, that's sucks' or 'it's confusing' can make the insecurities better. Maybe not fix them, but having your voice heard helps work through the feelings.

It's also those small talks that can turn small comments into understanding, and understanding breeds growth.

I got that small word when I was 15 from my high school chemistry teacher. He thought I was a cool kid and my own kind of weird, but in a good way. Whenever I needed to get away he and the other teachers would give me their papers to grade and I'd sit in their office grading as I listened to them talk. For once, I felt normal. I won't say their conversations fixed all my insecurities at once, but one thing stuck after a while: I was a fun, neat kid, and high school lasted for 4 years. It seems like forever while you're in it, but it's over real fast, and I needed to be happy with me.

It was small things said here and there. Positives ones. Constant ones. Words that didn't contradict each other, and actions that followed those words. And it was the adults in my life that gave them to me, not the other kids.

When you're the one sticking out in the crowd, sometimes that's just what you need.


Well, I think I said my piece. Small words, small actions, can make a huge difference in a person's life. Hopefully, they will be used in a positive way and not a negative one.


Drawing
I have a drawing for a free ebook of your choice. I have currently gotten the rights back to 5 of my stories so I only have three available for you at the moment - Cabin for Two: An Anthology, Awakening and Beginning Again: Finding Peace 1. If you have those, I do have some future stories that will be coming out and will be glad to put you down for those.

Leave your email and tell me what small word or action made a difference in your life or someone you knew.

I will draw at the end of the month and pick two winners.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!