"Sticks and stones..."

What ever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? Perhaps that teaching has been lost in our culture, along with kindness, respect, and basic considerations. Words like I’m sorry, please, and thank you are a rarity in this generation, and will soon be non-existent as we continue to indulge our children and youth in the world of self-absorption. It’s ME-mentality. Children are becoming more disrespectful toward their parents. Teens are more assertive and more aggressive. It’s not that verbal cruelty and abuse are new ideas. It used to be called note passing. You would take a slip of paper, write something mean about someone, then fold it, tap the person in front of you on the shoulder and ask them to pass it to your best friend who was sitting two rows over. It was basic, but more importantly it was contained. Now, platforms like MySpace expand the limited world of classroom note passing to the infinite world of cyberspace. You don’t just tell your best friend what a bitch someone is, you tell the world… including the person named. And, it can all be done anonymously. Though because our teenagers are so self-absorbed, they often want the attention it brings- because clearly everyone in the world wants to know what they think.

In case you missed the story, a teenage girl was recently ambushed, assaulted, and beaten by a group of eight girls (ages 14-18) because she allegedly wrote something negative about a couple of them on MySpace. One girl lured her to a house, where for 30 minutes, they punched, slapped, and beat her- while two guys stood watch outside. The girl was knocked unconscious at one point, and suffered hearing loss in one ear, and a loss of vision in one eye, along with suffering a concussion. Tell this girl that words will never hurt her!

What does this beating have to do with being self-absorbed? Well, if a carefully planned ambush and physical assault over an alleged verbal insult isn’t enough- one of the girls videotaped the entire 30-minute beating so they could post it on the internet. Wouldn’t you be proud of this behavior? Even negative fame is fame when all you care about is getting attention. And, just in case my ME-mentality point isn’t sinking in, after the girls were arrested, they were laughing and joking at the police station, lamenting over the fact they wouldn’t make it to the beach and asking if they would get out in time to make it to cheerleading practice.

I wish I were shocked by stories like this, but it’s difficult when they’ve become so commonplace. Somehow though, disappointment, sadness, and discouragement are still with me… along with frustration. Sure, we can blame music, and television and the barrage of teen-obsessed shows out there, but when that TV turns off, those teens are left living in a house with their parents- parents like the mother of one of the girls in the assault- the mother who stated on national television, “the incident was being overblown” by the sheriff. Overblown? OVERBLOWN?! Her daughter and friends beat a defenseless girl into unconsciousness. Since I don’t believe in attacking with sticks and stones, let me say this- she’s stupid.