Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Sticks & Stones

Do you remember the phrase: Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me?

Why do grown ups tell children such blatant lies?

I was a school yard scrapper – you picked on me and I fought back. When I was 6, playing 'catch and kiss' I changed the rules of the game: if you caught me, it was best if you let me go because if you kissed me, I punched you. When I was 7, I pushed a kid off a foot bridge (about a metre off the ground) when he said my family were peasants – my parents worked for his parents.

When I was 9, a boy twice my size called my brother (two years older than me) a “slant-eyed chink”. I was spoiling to fight, my arms flailing about as my more sensible brother held me back. The school principal stumbled across the fight – everyone had gathered around the three of us: Craig the hulking racist boar, my brother ram-rod still, his back to Craig and his arms around me – who was screaming and yelling “take that back – take that back” and trying with all my might to get closer to Craig – to punch or kick him or do something to make him feel the hurt I felt when he called my brother (and hence, me) a slant-eyed chink. We weren't Chinese for god's sake!

The principal said in that awful patronising sing-song voice I hope never to use on a child: sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. I turned on the principal and cried: But he's been the mean one! Not me! Don't tell me off – tell him off!

My brother said to me, quietly but with the force of his good heart: He's right, Oanh. No words of white round-eyed idiots can hurt us. My brother's words made me pause; I grinned. He grinned back. Craig and the principal looked shocked. My brother and I were sent home – Craig was taken back to the principal's office and his parents called.

When we got home, my brother did not tell my father what happened and I followed his lead. But I was still so angry and hurt I burst into tears at home, seemingly for no reason. My brother took the blame, saying he had been picking on me.

I can't remember all the school scraps I've had but I've never forgotten that day at school – the way two stupid, inaccurate phrases alienated and hurt my brother and I.

3 comments:

sume said...

You read my mind today! Earlier this morning I reposted and old post I'd written last year called "ghosts, sticks and stones".

I was very timid all through elementary school. It wasn't until high school did I start getting into fist fights. The kids in my school use to be very liberal with the slurs "chink", "gook" and my personaly favorite "pan-face".

Anonymous said...

Wait... you were sent home too?! How terrible. That principal should have been sent home!

Oanh said...

Sume -

Pan face!?

That's not one I've heard in the litany of racial slurs thrown my way... children can be so creative.

Iliana -

Yeah, my brother and I couldn't figure it out either. And we had to make something up to tell Ba (our father) about why we'd come home from school early.

 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.