Playground Lessons

When I was four years old I started going to kindergarten at Churchill School in Ottawa, Ontario. The kindergartners had their own playground separate from the "big kids", but since my sister was in an older grade, I would sneak over to their yard see her all the time. The teachers didn't seem to mind, but they would keep an eye on me all the same. One of my sister's friends, a boy who was three years older than me, would always play fight with me. I'd come at him with my tiny fists and weak little toddler arms and he would act like I was actually hurting him. He made me feel cool and tough in front of all the other big kids and I loved the attention he gave me.

Then one day he didn't come to school. When I couldn't find him I figured that everyone in the big kids yard knew our game and would play along with me in the same way. I punched another boy, but he did not pretend like I had hurt him. He did not clutch his arm and say "Owwwww you got me!" and wink at my sister. Instead, he glared at me with anger in his eyes, wound up his fist, and punched me back. Hard. I screamed and ran crying to the French teacher, demanding justice.

"Julia, I'm sorry. He should not have hit you, but you hit him first. And besides, you're not even supposed to be over here."

And that is how I got banned from the big kids yard.

I learned a few good life lessons from this incident:

1. Not everyone finds me to be adorable

Just because one person treats you a certain way, does not mean that everyone else will do the same. I had an interesting conversation with a Comedian friend of mine a while ago. He told me a story about a time when he was doing an interview on TV and getting his makeup done by the network's artist. While she was working, they were chatting and joking away until another man came and sat down in the chair next to him. My friend's makeup artist became visibly nervous and stopped talking entirely. The two men had a brief conversation, they shook hands and then the man left, wishing my friend good luck on his interview. "Do you know who that was?!" The makeup artist asked, wide-eyed. My friend obviously did not know who that was. "That was Robert Plant!" <blank stare> "The lead singer for Led Zeppelin!!!" Of course my friend has heard of Led Zeppelin. He's listened to their music and is familiar enough to sing along to a few lyrics, but he clearly would not be able to pick Robert Plant out of a crowd. That's the thing about people's perceptions of fame. One person will idolize you, have photos of you on their bedroom wall, follow your social media religiously, and wish to someday be just like you. Another person is completely oblivious to your existence. Another person knows who you are and doesn't like you at all. It is important to know how different people perceive you because it can dictate your behaviour and what is considered acceptable. I don't go around punching people anymore. I assume that most people either don't know or don't care about who I am, which is entirely fine by me. In fact, I assume that nobody is even reading this blog and that's cool too. But if you are, and you can get something positive out of it, that's even better and its the whole reason why I'm doing it. 
 

2. Don't start a fight* unless you're prepared to finish it

We had a few rules in my house growing up. First, you had to play a winter sport, a summer sport, and an instrument. I played curling, softball, soccer, ran track, and struggled my way through weekly piano lessons. I even briefly took some dance classes, but my curling teammates will confirm that I am no Anna Pavlova. The second rule was that if you made a commitment to something, you had to see it through to the end. We were not allowed to bail out if we changed our minds or because something was more challenging than we thought it would be. When I was about three years old my mom signed me up for gymnastics class. Every week I would put on my tights and my leotard, climb into the back of our brown Oldsmobile and my mom would drive me down to the Ottawa Gymnastics Club. There, a very enthusiastic instructor taught our little group of three year olds how to jump on a trampoline and stand on a balance beam. We would tumble around on a mat doing somersaults until we were too dizzy to stand up. Never once did I protest or complain about going to gymnastics. When the program ended and we returned home after my last class, I looked up at my mom in the foyer of our house as we were taking off our coats and diplomatically said, "That was really fun, mummy, but please never make me do that again". Sometimes, things suck. You've signed up for a program or a job that didn't turn out to be quite what was advertised. When I started my Psychology degree at Trent University I thought that it would help me become a High School Counselor. I wanted to help kids who were struggling with life and school as my counselors had done for me. Once I started the program, I realized that Psychology is more about statistics and research than it is about actually directly helping people. I wanted to quit after my first year in the program, but then I was reminded that I am a Weagle, and Weagles don't quit. I bore down, finished my degree, and while I am still sitting on a mountain of student debt I will forever be grateful for that diploma on my wall and everything that it represents.

3. People are not likely to give you sympathy when you're in the wrong 

My mom is an English Teacher and an Author who taught me how to read and write at a very young age. My reading and comprehension levels were always much higher than the grade I was in, which made me a bit of a smart-ass and a nuisance to most of my English teachers. In eighth grade I sat at the back of the class with a couple of my friends and didn't participate or pay too much attention to what was going on in the lessons. My teacher was not too fond of me, nor I of her. One day, one of the girls in my class got up to go to the bathroom and the rusty old doorknob from the inside of the door fell off in her hand. She looked at me, then replaced it back on the door. A normal person probably would have left it alone or informed someone that it was broken, but for some reason I thought it would be really funny as we lined up to leave for our next class to steal the doorknob and toss it in my backpack when nobody was looking. The last student out of the room closed the door, effectively locking our English teacher inside. News of the faulty door spread quickly across the school and kids kept running by her classroom to slam the door and lock her in. She was forced to either call the office to get someone to come let her out or climb out of the first floor window to get outside. It wasn't long before my little prank went from funny to mean spirited bullying and I started to feel bad about it. I knew I was going to get in a lot of trouble, but I eventually did the right thing and went to her classroom after school to confess my crime. She thanked me for coming clean and then asked me to return the doorknob with no hard feelings. The problem was, I had already gotten rid of the evidence. That was when she got really mad. I got sent to the principal's office for a very long lecture on how inconsiderate I had been and was ordered to pay for the replacement. My parents were called by my principal to be informed about this terrible thing I had done. They punished me in their own way by cooking up the messiest dinners and making me do all of the clean up. I know it sounds like I got let off easy for my petty theft, but let me tell you - paying for stuff and scrubbing nasty chicken pans are two of my most hated activities. Were my actions funny? Sure they were. Everyone had a good laugh, but it came at someone else's expense and it was wrong. I couldn't expect anyone to feel sorry for me while I gagged over a sink full of greasy, crusty, chicken skin. As the old saying goes, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. 

4. Privilege can be taken away just as easily as it is given

When I was in the third grade, I received the great honor of attendance duty. It was a huge responsibility bestowed on one lucky individual that involved taking the duotang which held that day's attendance record all the way from our third floor classroom, down the hall, down the stairs, and deposit it in the appropriate box on the Office Administrator's desk, then turning around and going right back to class. Since it was the third grade and we did everything on the buddy system, I also got to select another student to come on this magnificent adventure with me. One day, the lucky friend who I selected did not feel like being in class and unsurprisingly neither did I. We decided to stretch out the time we spent in the hall for as long as possible. We took tiny baby steps as slowly as we could all... the... way... to... the... office... and... back. The whole ordeal probably took us about half an hour when it should have only taken five minutes. We returned to a seething mad teacher. She couldn't leave her 30 other students alone to come looking for us so she had sent some other kids out to find us, but they somehow came up empty (we might have been hiding in the bathroom for a while). She was probably about to put the entire school on lockdown when we finally strolled casually through the door without a care in the world. Needless to say, I was immediately stripped of the coveted attendance duty, yelled at and humiliated in front of the entire class.

The moral here is this: If someone trusts you with something, don't disappoint them. Be grateful for what you have and the opportunities that are given to you and don't act like a spoiled brat. Think about how your actions impact other people and be aware that you can hurt someone without even realizing you're doing it. Maybe we all act like jerks who deserve to get punched now and then, but the important thing is to reflect, learn, and grow to be a better person.




*Not meant as a reference to physical violence, nor do I condone violence of any kind.