Big Dreams, Little Things

Date: December 9, 2010
Description: Written on my old blog while working at a rural county high school.

My heart hurts. It isn’t like I didn’t know this kind of thing was happening in our kids’ social circles, but to actually hear it from the horse’s mouth is another thing.

I just overheard a lengthy, detailed conversation by some teen boys about their various “weekend activities” with the fairer gender.

It was heartbreaking and nauseating at the same time. These guys – all of 17 and 18 years old – talk about what they're doing like it's a rite of passage - which, to an extent, I supposed it is. Except that I pictured my own future son, a few decades from now, sitting around with his buddies and having a similar discussion … and my heart hurt for him.

I want my son to know real love. I want my son to have boundaries, to retain parts of himself for his own family someday, to respect women, to respect his relationships … I want my son to be confident in who he is, and to never second guess himself. I don’t ever want him to look to the rest of the world for an answer. I want him to be discerning. I want him to go against the grain … I don’t want him to be just like me, but I do want him to be blessed with what I was blessed with … because I believe my discerning nature as a teenager was a blessing.

I don’t want my daughter to become mixed up with these boys, either. I don’t care if she doesn’t have a boyfriend until her twenties … whoever he is, I want her to be valued. To think that my daughter might be the subject of one of those boys’ stories … it pains me. It hurts me to imagine her, objectified, perhaps by a guy she thought respected and admired her.

But this is happening. It’s happening every day … every weekend. Every night after football games and school dances. It sucks.

You know what the worst part was, though?

The conversation eventually evolved to making fun of another boy who was minding his own business and reading a book by himself. “He’s probably back there wishing he had stories to tell, too.”

The book-reading kid was the last to leave class because he wanted to let me know that he’d earned more community service hours this weekend by working as a Salvation Army bell ringer.
He’s done multiple things this semester in order to earn community service time. The other boys? They’ve either done nothing, or they done one thing in one day to earn them all the hours they’re required to earn in a semester.

And I thought – is there anyway I can show this boy that, for every moment they’ve spent teasing him, he’s donated a moment of his time to helping meet a need in his community … ?

For what it’s worth, I know that I can’t take away from these kids what’s already been done. I know that I can’t become their parents. But I do know that I have dreams for my own children someday, and they don’t look anything like this at all.