The above statement may be harsh and tacky to some. I know fighting fire with fire is not something I want to pass down to the three Divas. I know it it best to turn the other cheek and walk away. The problem is how do you teach those values, but instill in them that they have permission to stand up for themselves by any means necessary.
I was bullied from the kindergarten to the 9th grade. I vividly remember pissing on myself while standing in front of the teacher on the playground in kindergarten because I was horrified of two bullies in the bathroom. These girls quite often pushed me, called me names, and pulled my hair. The shame I felt that day destroyed me. Unfortunately, that day was just the beginning. We moved around quite a bit in my early childhood, so I was often the "new" girl. New girls get both positive and negative attention. It didn't help that I was very small for my age and rocked a nice Eddie Monster unibrow.
At every new school, the bullying always started with just name calling and moved on to physical threats and interactions. I was pushed in a fucking locker in the 7th grade and my clothes were thrown on top of the locker. I was also bitch slapped that same semester for getting a girl out in dodge ball. In the ninth grade, a young girl got so upset because I was riding in the backseat with her boyfriend during Driver's Ed. I could see the look of rage in her eyes and I quickly exited the car and tried my best to run to the front steps of the school. I made it to the last step and felt like I had just slid into home base. Until a big ass rock, hit me on the side of my head. Yep, the bitch took a rock and hit me in my head with it.
My father spent countless hours at school because I was hysterical most of the time. Who the hell wants to come to school and get their ass beat??? I remember the principal pleading with me to not call my father one day after a girl knocked my books out of my hand and pushed me into the wall. He called me "Jones" which is my maiden name. "Jones, now don't go and call your daddy and stir up a ruckus. Just go back to class and avoid the girl" he pleaded. I was dumbfounded. The son of a bitch basically said I was the problem. Luckily, they had payphones at school and I called my father. My father came to school that day to whoop somebody's ass and was not going to stop until his daughter stopped getting her ass whooped. My dear grandmother even resorted to giving me a sharpened pencil to stab a little girl at church. This little girl beat my ass literally 6 days a week. My only off day from her was Saturday. Luckily, my mother questioned me about the sharpened pencil I was holding tightly in my hand. She took the pencil away from me and told me once again the words that have stuck with me forever. "It's cause you're pretty and they're ugly". She told me those words over and over again for the 15 years I had her in my life.
The majority of the time, she would add personal information about the family in her pep talk and gave me permission to repeat the information verbatim. And I did. I would walk up to the bully the next day and say word for word what secrets my mom had revealed. "You're just mad because your daddy left your mama for another man." BAM....of course, I would get slapped again and I would run to the principal's office and the whole damn cycle would start over again. I endured hell until I was old enough to get a boyfriend. If I didn't have a boyfriend, I had a shit load of male friends that were willing to beat the hell out of anyone that dared to approach me. I actually became well liked and walked away from high school with many titles: Miss THS, Homecoming Queen, Hall of Fame, Class Favorite, etc.
The bullying I experienced as a child and throughout my teen years were physical and verbal. The verbal shit that I was told hurt 10 times more than the physical stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't learn how to fight with my fists. I fought with words and I played dirty and hard. To this day, I frighten myself with the words that can come out of my mouth when I feel threatened.
So, I was not shocked when my first response to the little shit calling my Divas a "hoe" was to go straight into a ratchet verbal assault. My two oldest Divas had no idea what a "hoe" was. They just knew it was a bad word. I tried to explain that "hoe" was short for whore and that a whore was.....hell....a lady with a lot of husbands and boyfriends. I know...but it was the best I could come up with. Miss B was listening in and of course started repeating "hoe" over and over again. I'm trying to get her to stop and she's screaming "Santa says it." Shit....I could shake the hell out of the little bastard right now. His mama is such a "hoe"!!!!!!
Fuck, now I feel like a hypocrite. How I will maneuver through the next couple of years will be shocking to say the least. How do you find a middle??? I want my Divas to stand up for themselves. I want them to scare the shit out of someone with their words if they are ever bullied. Confession: they have been given permission to knock the hell out of anyone that touches them. They are small for their size. So, they have been told to fight dirty.
Seriously, I didn't even know what the word "hoe" meant at their age. So, I worry about their generation. I worry about cyber bullying. I worry about mean girls. I work about shitty boys.
My job is to protect them, to nurture them, and to build their self esteem. I'll be damned if some little shit messes with that. Mama plays dirty.
We have an obligation to teach all children that any form of bullying will not be tolerated. I will gladly take on that responsibility one "your mama is a hoe" little prick at a time.
