Have You Forgotten? (Part 1)

Have You Forgotten? (Part 1) August 17, 2016

dell and margaret 1This photo was taken in July, 1963.  It was my last summer–for many years–of believing that I was lovable outside of my family.  Just around the corner, a bully awaited me, surrounded by her followers,  who were all afraid of what the bully’s revenge would look like if they didn’t follow her orders.

Bullying is not an event; it is an evil seed.  If the one being bullied has no antidote (in the form of parental support, or religious/cultural re-interpretation of the bullying, or courageous friends), it grows into self-loathing, social anxiety, depression, eating disorders, etc.  I had witnessed it when I lived in Chicago and attended Murray Elementary school.  There were three black boys in my class, and the white teacher had a habit of asking them to come forward and then of announcing how badly they had performed.  I was eight years old, but this shaming was utterly dissonant to me.  I knew it was wrong.

And soon, it was me being shamed.   I did not have a sense that it was wrong, that others were at fault.  The shaming/bullying was, of course, utterly dissonant, but my first thought was that something was wrong with me, that others were simply responding to my ugliness or to my strangeness, and I needed to accept that.  There was no room to stand up and say, “Hey! This is wrong!”  When you are the one being shamed, you are voiceless, and you only contemplate the ways you might have earned such treatment.

Fourth grade at Wasatch Elementary.  There was one good day in Mrs. Champion’s class.  As I had done in Mexico the previous summer, I executed dang good cartwheels on the playground.  Unfortunately, I had not realized that show-offy cartwheels were forbidden–and punishable.

I came to school the next day, entered my classroom, and was shunned.  Nobody would speak to me.  If I went to the teacher’s desk, anyone who had been there immediately left.  I don’t remember what my exact thoughts were that first day of my shunning.  I didn’t imagine that it would be continued through the next day, but it was.  Even in my Primary class at church, my chair was separated from the other chairs.  (I have often wondered why the Primary teacher didn’t say anything about that.)  There was one girl who I was sure would be kind to me, but after Primary, I brought her the coat she had left in our classroom.  She stopped me as I stepped towards her.  “Just throw it,” she said.  “I don’t want to get fleas.”   I don’t know if she remembers that–and it doesn’t matter at all.  In 2016, she is a magnificent woman, one I admire. The thing is that I remember it.  When I look back to my childhood, the episodes of bullying spring from my history like tall stinging nettle.  We know that the negative things said to us come with ten times the power as the positive things.  Is it because they are so foreign to our expectations, to the love we have always experienced?

After a few days, I asked Karla, one of my classmates, what was wrong with me, why nobody liked me.  She obliged me with a two-page list of my failings, the first thing on the list being that I was a redhead. And yes, those cartwheels had positioned me outside of the circle of fourth graders, and even on Death Row.  My whole body responded to this apocalyptic change.  My eyes got bad.  I have wondered if the onset of my myopia was triggered by the bullying.  It was the next year that I got very thick glasses.

I was in Provo only for the final two months of fourth grade, and I honestly don’t remember if the shunning ended before summer break.  I do know that the main bully–who I would never name, as I understand that she has become a humanitarian and a great woman–made commands to the others.  During recess, she ordered Laurie White to twist Barbara Hatch’s arm.  What alternative did Laurie have?  If you didn’t follow the bully’s orders, you got bullied!  Laurie walked up to Barbara, twisted her arm, and made her cry.  Barbara lived nearby, and she ran home in tears–not just from the pain, but because it was her friend Laurie who had inflicted it.

But then Laurie showed her character.  After that traumatic recess, she could not pay attention to the math or English lessons.  She wrote in a notebook and chanted to herself over and over, “I will never hurt another person, no matter who tells me to.”  She knew that she was now excluding herself from the circle, and she didn’t care.  And she kept her word, becoming one of the kindest, most empathetic people I’ve ever known.  She taught at Wasatch Elementary fifteen years later. (Her name was then Mrs. Porter, for any who might have known her.)  She told me that she had never seen a bully as bad as that girl in fourth grade, but that she certainly saw bullying, and she could identify which children would probably be bullied. I am certain that she became their friend, the one who believed in them. Her decision to “never hurt another person” was foundational to who she is.  Not only does she never hurt another, she edifies and inspires.

The next few years need not be detailed.  The damage was done.  I knew that I was unacceptable. I spent far too much time eating candy and watching “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie.” I wrote down the names of all the actors.  Even now, I am amazingly knowledgeable when it comes to TV trivia of the 1960s.  Those shows were my diversions and my life.

I didn’t talk about my sense of exclusion much.  Who would I talk to?  But when I was twelve and the Young Women’s group was scheduled to have a camp away from our families, it was too much.  I dreaded what was before me.  I would be only with people who hated me!  I told my mother that I didn’t want to go.  She asked me why, though I’m guessing she already knew.  “Nobody likes me,” I said.

My wise mother did not produce a cliche and tell me to get over it; she shared a story from her own childhood. Isn’t it interesting that she remembered it so well? When she was in elementary school in Idaho Falls, she said to some of her classmates, “Let’s make a baseball team!”  One of them responded, “Why don’t you BE the baseball team!  You’re big enough!”

Ouch. As I recall, Mom and I laughed about it, though. I don’t recall what else she said to persuade me, but I went to camp.

In the standard underwear raid, all bras and panties were strung on a clothesline for us to claim in the morning.  Mine were green and yellow paisley.  They had been on sale, and Mom thought I’d like them.  To taunts of “Whose are THOSE!”, I pulled my underwear from the clothesline, my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

But something happened on the last day of camp. We were gathered for a testimony meeting.  I don’t remember who I sat by; my memory has me alone.   I heard one young woman whom I did not know say to another, “I love you so much!”  And suddenly, I was filled with emotions I had never experienced, at least not to this extent.  We were in the space of what I would now call the Divine Feminine–under the stars, surrounded by aspen and pine trees.  I did not hear a voice, but I had a sense of divine communication: “You are loved.  You are loved.  You are loved.”  I began weeping.  I was so full of love and joy that I could not resist loving everyone around me, and everything.

I wasn’t the only one who experienced what I call “an outpouring of the Spirit.”  Michelle hugged me later and said, “I used to hate your red hair–but it’s beautiful!  I love it!  I love you!”

I did not instantly recover from what the two-month bullying in fourth grade had done to my sense of identity, but from that point on, I trusted the young women who were at camp with me.  I began having conversations with them.  Julie Weaver and I stayed up late one night and talked.  Angie Thomas and I talked.  It was a new world, and I was not an outsider.

Sadly, my insecurities were still higher and seemingly more permanent than heavenly assurances that I was loved.  I would go through high school as a successful debater, orator, and actress–but with the nagging sense of how big my hips and thighs were, how ugly I was, how undesirable.  I now realize that most of us in High School felt these excruciating self-doubts.  I was not unique. (And no, you three young men, it did not help when you circulated a drawing of an elephant leg titled “Margaret Blair’s thigh.”  But you are good men now, and you have daughters and granddaughters, and I know that if you could undo that unkind act, you would.)

Kathy Headlee Minor said in Education Week 2016 that science shows us that children are naturally drawn to altruism and kindness.   Cooperation is our natural state.  Of course, competition will come (especially if it is encouraged), but we are meant to be loving.  She spoke of an epiphany in which she felt unloved, and suddenly sensed a revelation: “Everyone loves you! They treasure you!  You shouted together for joy! They have simply forgotten.”

In my theology, which includes a pre-mortal life, we all lived in some spiritual form as divine creations.  We lived in love.  Those who have had near death experiences consistently mention the LOVE they feel in that other world.  It is that love which we come from, and to which we will return.  When we respond to those who have forgotten that they love us, when we seek revenge or to respond with aggression, we too have forgotten, and we will certainly start a small war.  The life which seeks to be justified and avenged of all wrongs rather than creating new “rights” and new sacred spaces of love will circle around little whirlwinds which have the potential to become spiritual tornadoes.

Blairs whole familyMy most painful lessons–and my most glorious ones–lay ahead.  Because I had been successful in acting and oratory, I clung to that success as though it were my whole identity.  I would soon learn that I had given my talents far too much power over my eternal self.

 

As a bonus, I’m linking ,by Carol Lynn Pearson which I have loved since I first heard it.  I dedicate it to Olive Aisley Wagstaff, my granddaughter, who will be born in one month.

 

 


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