Teaching kindness <3

A thought has been bouncing around in my head for long enough that I think it needs to be a post. I am not sure if I have to make a point of it or if you all will just be able to relate it to something going on in your own life, but here it is. 

As I have mentioned before, my dad retired from the Air Force when I was six or seven years old. Up to that time, we moved four times. Upon his retirement, he decided to move us back to their hometown of Louisville. 

I was thrilled. We lived in the same place as one of my mom’s mom and sister. We lived in a real neighborhood and I started school with kids who lived around me. I was the new kid, which wasn’t that odd for me except in the military, we are all basically new kids all the time. 

Learning how to make friends among established friendships was a different experience, but I bided my time knowing eventually I would have a place here. 

Then a newer than me kid showed up. 

She talked funnier than I did and had unusual airs about her and, unlike me, was bent on getting us to flex to her rather than the other way around. 

So she became the butt of jokes and teasing. 

No longer feeling like the outsider since I had been there a bit longer, and due to the fact that she carried herself in such a way that she was an easy target, I joined in to the giggles and not so behind her back imitations of her mannerisms. 

This was short lived. 

One day my teacher pulled me aside and said that I seemed to be a kind hearted child and perhaps could understand how this newcomer felt since I had been her not so long ago. She asked me to do her, the teacher, a favor and be a friend to this girl. 

It was a moment of reckoning. I knew that the teasing didn’t really feel good, even if it did make me more a part of the group. To meet the request would mean putting myself in the odd-man-out camp again. 

But I loved my new teacher and I knew in my heart she was right. So I did what little I could to try and be a friend. Turns out, she really wasn’t that nice herself. We didn’t develop a true friendship, but I did distance myself from the crowd that didn’t accept her. 

I am not sure how it all went, so it must have gone okay. I know it made an impression on my to not try to earn friendship by participating in behavior that is hurtful to others. The teacher’s intervention expanded my thinking to put myself in someone else’s place more. 

Soon after all of that, my father decided to move us to another town for a different job and I was the new kid all over again. Sigh. But I am thankful for the experiences of my childhood and the people who took the time to make me a better human being.