Archive for July, 2009

Jason P. LaComb
Age 12

As far back as I can remember, boys called other boys fags; I was called a fag. In grade school, I didn’t think too deeply or seriously about the slur since I had always known I was different from most other boys, and at the time, I thought different meant special or gifted or original. Looking back, the other boys’ perceptive powers must have detected that my mother lovingly molded me in ways only a mother knows, while father was absent. Sure I displayed some very “feminine” characteristics in both physicality and personality, but I still peed in a urinal, played dodge ball, and had girlfriends most of the time.

But something changed in junior that thrust me deep into culture shock, as overnight I was reduced from big fish student body sixth grade president to little fish encircled by pond sharks. For me, the abstract term “fag” underwent a Jekyll and Hyde mutation. Suddenly, like sticks and stones, the word itself began to hurt me just as a kid’s pushing or hitting. And my middle school predators were not exclusively male; one of the most aggressive and relentless was a socially awkward girl I initially thought my friend.

One day she decided I was her ticket to fly under the radar and avoid being victimized herself. During class free time, she turned to me and began a Q&A game. In the moment, I thought the game would be a series of innocent questions to while away the time. Nearby, a crowd of boys sat within earshot; they would be the audience for her well-orchestrated sniper attack.

1st Question: If I asked you to look for dirt under your finger nails, how would you do it?

Innocently stepping onto the land mine, I turned my palms down, lifted my hands vertically, and then tipped the nails back slightly toward my eyes.

Survey says: FAG! incorrect response.

The correct “non-fag” response of course was to turn palms up and curl ever so masculinely the fingers inward toward the eyes. Taking the bait, the emergent testosterone boys smelled blood and moved in for the kill. Cornered, I cowered and waited for the next shot.

2nd Question: If I asked you to put on some Chapstick, how would you do it?

Not having an abundance of acceptable responses at my disposal, I reluctantly applied the lip balm first to lower lip, left to right several times; then upper lip just as thoroughly; pressed my lips together the way my wonderful mother had taught so many years ago; and finished with an audible smacking sound.

Survey says: FAG! incorrect response.

The correct “non-fag” response of course was to rush thru the effort in a slipshod manner and finish abruptly by smacking the lip balm onto the desk. By this time, my interrogator had been elevated to resident fortune teller and her tarot cards began revealing a truth to the student body –- at least that’s what the growing pack of predators figured.

3rd & Final Question: If I asked you to walk a straight line, how would you do it?

Heart racing and palms sweating, I finally saw an escape route. I’d perform this last incriminating parlor trick, keep walking right out of the classroom to the nearest cave, and lick my wounds until the next school day.

As I stood, the boys couldn’t contain themselves any longer and starting verbally hitting me with FAG! HOMO! Pretty Boy!

Propelling myself forward, I crossed one leg in front of the other like a seasoned runway model — to this day I am not sure if nature, nurture or both created my walk, but it was definitely different from the other boys, and even I knew it was not “normal.” The taunts grew louder and laughter began punctuating the cacophony, and I think I heard the socially awkward girl holler as I slipped through the door, “What a loser; such a faggot.”

That was the precise moment I decided to change.

I knew in that instant how I could preclude any future attacks of the sort. Practicing all night that first night and then for weeks thereafter, I consciously and physically altered the way I walked. Adopting a pseudo-bowlegged stance, I trained my legs to spread just a bit and my toes to point slightly outward, thus preventing any leg crossover. Unwavering focus and determination ensured that a relapse would never occur, nor any traces of the runway walk remain.

The following year, eigth grade, my new walk, lip balm application technique, and finger curling enabled some modest social gains. Then, an abrupt family move landed me in a new town and fostered a complete transformation as my past faux pas could be securely locked away.

As an adult, I often wonder as I inadvertently glance at my nails “incorrectly,” how my life may have been different if I hadn’t been so adept at conforming –- at least on the outside. As a father, I wonder how my two children might be pressured to change and what aspects of their beautiful individuality might be lost forever. Hopefully, they will find the strength and courage I lacked to resist conformity, so they remain one of a kind on the outside as well as inside.

Body image is an arena for social torture and self-cruelty against which many girls and boys have few defenses. We were hoping to cover the matter thoroughly in the Can I Sit With You? project, but so far have received few stories about body image and the social pressures that build or warp it.

Most children with distorted body images have been lured into a state of self-loathing by media imagery, and by media-indoctrinated classmates defending those implanted beliefs rather than trusting their own eyes, feelings, and health.

Nattering at school-age kids about being “beautiful just as you are!” doesn’t always help. Hearing stories from people who drank the media’s body image kool-aid and recovered, or who are still struggling with being poisoned, can.

If you have a story about wrestling with body image at school, please send it to us.

Thank you,

Shan & Jen

T.R. Shockley
Elementary and Middle School

Throughout school life, I broke more bones than anyone did. First, I broke a right index finger, falling out of a tree house built with a friend. Later, steering my bike by only using the handle bar streamers, I broke three toes in my left foot. Just before entering the seventh grade, while riding sidebar on a friend’s bike, a foot caught in the front wheel spokes, another autograph trophy, this time for my left wrist.

In the ninth grade, I cracked the heel in my left foot. Don, Mike, Aerial and I sneaked into my a friend’s backyard pool area while they were away. Showing off, as I was rather inclined to do then, I jumped, not from the diving board, but from the guesthouse roof, and … I almost made it. The twenty-foot flight though the air was bliss until my left heel hit the side of the pool deck, as I tumbled into the pool. The doctor said I should have a cast, but I couldn’t see anyway to tell my parents how it happened. Even to this day, the mild pain of my heel during the winter months reminds me of that blissful flight through the air and the screaming pain encapsulated within air bubbles, as I rolled to the bottom of the pool, my friends quickly by my side to help.