{"id":212,"date":"2011-06-08T04:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=212"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:56","slug":"girlgeeks-kids-avenge-moms-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/06\/girlgeeks-kids-avenge-moms-honor\/","title":{"rendered":"Girlgeek’s Kids Avenge Mom’s Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Change your maps: Connecticut is the Khyber Pass; America\u2019s suburbs are Pakistan\u2019s tribal areas. The children of America\u2019s hipster moms are paying off their parents\u2019 blood debts.* As an anonymous woman writes to Slate\u2019s<\/i> Emily Yoffe:<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I enrolled my two boys into an exclusive private school in our new hometown. At a school event I bumped into an attractive woman whom I didn\u2019t recognize. She came by and asked if I remember her. It turns out that she was someone I bullied in high school. After that day I noticed other moms slowly avoiding me. I think she must have told them about how I used to bully her. Eventually my boys started coming home, crying and upset that other kids wouldn\u2019t play with them. My younger son was not allowed to join a game of hockey during recess because another boy told him, \u201cMy mom says your mom is a b***h.\u201d They are now openly being ridiculed and ostracized at school by their peers. I asked to meet my former classmate and apologized for bullying her as I was young and stupid, although I don\u2019t much remember what I did. She smiled at me in a creepy way and said she went through therapy for what I put her through. I haven\u2019t told my husband about this woman because I\u2019m a little ashamed at how I used to treat her. Putting my boys into another school is not a feasible option, but I just don\u2019t know what to do. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking as an underdog and the son of an underdog, my gut reaction is to cry, \u201cShabash!\u201d or \u201cBravo!\u201d Upon first moving to New York, my mother worked briefly for the father of a man who is now a well-known pundit. Once she overheard the man\u2019s wife refer to her contemptuously as \u201cYour secretary\u2026or whatever they\u2019re calling them these days.\u201d (My mother never mentioned any dismissive toss of the hair, but I\u2019ve always inferred one.) Ever since she told me that story, it\u2019s been one of my fondest ambitions to write a column taking memsahib\u2019s<\/i> son all the way down to Chinatown, as DeNiro put it. Unfortunately, I often agree with him.<\/p>\n

The author of the letter says two things that make her especially loathsome in my sight. First, right off the bat, she mentions her former victim\u2019s new attractiveness, as if it somehow changes the moral geometry of the situation. Should Botox make bygones, bygones? If the woman had remained homely, would the opinion of her kids matter less? \u201cDon\u2019t worry if those hoodlums exclude you, Jared. I mean, God, just look at their mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worse, she seems not to have learned any larger lessons about bullying. She\u2019s \u201ca little ashamed\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s it. I suspect if she were being really honest, she\u2019d admit she thinks bullying part of life\u2019s natural order, like unequal distribution of wealth. Would she be so quick to blow the whistle if her kids were the ones wearing the jackboots? Something tells me no.<\/p>\n

That may be a human universal \u2014 people regret their bad behavior only for so long as convention obliges them to, and not a second more. In John Fowles\u2019 Magus<\/i> \u2014 a book a far more knowing friend calls one of the most overrated of all time, but which I love \u2014 a young man is drawn into a bizarre series of experiments that involve him being repeatedly seduced and dumped by a beautiful girl. At the end, he\u2019s handed a Roman-style flagellum and told he can flog her if he likes. He doesn\u2019t, for complicated reasons, among them a realization that, though he will be able to make her suffer, he\u2019ll never be able to make her sorry.<\/p>\n

For some people, making an old oppressor suffer is enough. Not for me. Been there, done that. When I was working in loss mitigations, I often found myself talking to the kind of formerly nouveaux riches jerks who\u2019d treated me like a coolie back when I was closing mortgages. For a while, it was fun to make them cringe in the dust. It took some skill, too. They\u2019d come at me with their sense of entitlement bared, throwing their weight around as they would with a customer-service rep. With a few cold, well-timed ego-bursters, I\u2019d remind them that: 1) they were about to lose their homes; 2) they were in no position to make demands; and 3) for best results, commence begging now. The novelty wore off, though \u2014 mainly because nobody cried, \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have been so recklessly acquisitive!\u201d or, more to the point, \u201cI should have been more polite to that grad school dropout who cold-called me about my refi! Ai, me!\u201d <\/p>\n

After that, alpha-rolling became just another tiresome step in an irksome job.<\/p>\n

Just goes to show that revenge, served at any temperature, is overrated. For certain women, however, a timely spaying might not be a terrible thing.<\/p>\n

*You\u2019re probably wondering, \u201cWhat kind of hipster lives in the suburbs?\u201d Well, I\u2019m using the word in its broadest sense, that is, on anyone who: 1) reads Slate;<\/i> 2) will probably not vote for Sarah Palin; but 3) has much more money than I.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Change your maps: Connecticut is the Khyber Pass; America\u2019s suburbs are Pakistan\u2019s tribal areas. The children of America\u2019s hipster moms are paying off their parents\u2019 blood debts.* As an anonymous woman writes to Slate\u2019s Emily Yoffe: I enrolled my two boys into an exclusive private school in our new hometown. At a school event I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bullying"],"yoast_head":"\nGirlgeek's Kids Avenge Mom's Honor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Change your maps: Connecticut is the Khyber Pass; America's suburbs are Pakistan's tribal areas. 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