Kids today really need to get tougher skins or they'll all be dead in five years and the world as we know it will slowly draw to a close, Children of Men-style.
A 14 year-old girl hangs herself because the friends of her alleged rapist were tormenting her?
Numerous high-school kids killing themselves because kids make fun of their sexuality?
Kids so afraid to go to school because they are getting bullied that they drop out, go into highly-medicated therapy, get even more depressed, and kill themselves later?
I love to break it to you, kids, but this shit has been going on since the dawn of human society. Deal with it, just like everybody has done for millennia. You are not special, this is not a new and more potent form of torture that the human psyche is unable to withstand.
You think it's awful that people make fun of you in the school cafeteria? That you get text messages that say "Suck my dick, faggot!" or "U R a lesbo LOL!"? That mean people write mean things on your Facebook page that you can immediately delete? Oh, no! Your life is so unimaginably difficult--nobody else could possibly understand because cell phones and Facebook and fags weren't around when they were kids!
Yeah, well, it wasn't that long ago that kids actually got the shit kicked out of them on a daily basis by roving bands of thugs and even their teachers verbally abused them. Before the modern era of "we care about our kids to the point of suffocation" and feel-good PC bullshit, kids used to go to the Principal complaining about getting beat-up and the Principal would beat them up for being stool pigeons. There didn't used to be security cameras and cell phone cameras to gather evidence--it used to be one person's word against another. You used to have to be even tougher to get through the day.
If you think things today are tough, try being some dude living in 15th-century rural society, where every single person in town knows intimate details of everybody's lives and they all make fun of you behind your back, in the pub, after/in church, on the street. If they really didn't like you, they'd burn your fucking house down and even the local sheriff would roast a marshmallow over the blaze.
There was no place to hide.
Oh, wait, there totally were numerous places to hide AND STILL ARE:
This could be you in a few years
1. You could run away and become a sailor in the merchant marine. Although this WILL require you to either lose 50 pounds of Twinkie fat or put 25 pounds of muscle on your blanched computer-geek frame, but neither of those scenarios is the worst thing in the world, right? If nothing else, people will stop making fun of you so much and you could get back to normal.
Even nerds can sell their bodies! [Notice glasses/body]
2. You could whore yourself out to your tormentors/friends--cash upfront, of course--until you stash enough money to buy a shack somewhere in the mountains and live a long, healthy life with your cat, your books of poetry, bathtub hooch, and your fascinating memoir. There's nothing like being called a whore and then turning it back on them, telling them that yeah, you are a whore and for $100 you'll make all their dreams come true. If the person is a mega-asshole, just take the money and run and play innocent when/if he tells on you and tries to explain what the $100 was for.
See anything you could tolerate for a while, boys and girls?
3. You could marry some rich old man and steal a bunch of money from him (or, these days, just take half when you divorce). Once you have some money, you can go do whatever the fuck you want and make new friends and forget all that bullshit ever happened.
If Mel can do it, so can you
4. You could simply move to a different fucking town where nobody knows you. And yes, even in the internet age, this is possible (Hello! Change your name and start a new profile and nobody will know/care). "But what will I do for money?" "WHO CARES? Even if you're only able to live for a few more weeks of hobo adventure before you wind up knifed to death under a bridge, isn't risking everything for a better life a better choice than ending it in your bedroom at your parents' house in the suburbs? Get some goddamn perspective, you stupid little shit!"
If this kid can do it, can't you?
5. You could work at Subway (or the blacksmith shop/bakery/coopery) for a year and buy passage to some tropical island where nobody knows you, where you will scrounge out a living selling coconuts or bubbles or Chiclets to tourists, or maybe drive a rickshaw. Isn't that better than being dead?
Borrow some of his strength
6. Or you could go the easiest route of all--HARDEN THE FUCK UP AND JUST DEAL WITH IT LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE DOES. High school is only four goddamn years long. Just be glad you aren't doing life in a dingy prison somewhere, or you'd really have something to bitch about.
Even worse than the kids bitching and moaning about teenage trifles are the coddling parents who give credence to these complaints and seek to "understand and resolve the problem." You want to understand the problem? It's human nature and there's nothing you can do about it; much like humans themselves, the problem will adapt to defeat any roadblock you throw in its path. You want to resolve it? Tell your kid it doesn't fucking matter and s/he should just continue doing their own thing.
There--I just saved you thousands of dollars in therapy sessions and prescription medications that (in most cases) only make the problem worse because it magnifies it through over-analysis that leads the patients to think they may be even more fucked-up than they initially thought, not to mention the bonus points for launching them off on a lifetime of drug addiction and weak self-image.
It pains me that when people kill themselves (especially kids/teenagers) they get pity thrown at them from all comers when the fact of the matter is that suicide is an easy, selfish refuge for people who are just too goddamn weak to drum up the bare minimum of willpower it takes to survive in this relatively comfortable world.
If you are truly that weak, then I say good riddance. I'd rather have a tribe of lion hunters roaming the country than a gaggle of geeky weaklings who do nothing but complain themselves into the grave about the state of their lives when they have lived for 14-18 years without having to lift a fucking finger to have food in their bellies, a roof over their heads, a high-quality education in their brains, and a cellphone+laptop in their hands.
It really isn't that hard to decide you don't give a fuck about what everybody says, ignore them, and grow up to seek your fortune elsewhere.
Trust me.
Sincerely,
Your Angry Guidance Counselor/Theatre Director
_
No comments:
Post a Comment