Once the memory of their school days starts to fade, many adults think the troubles of this time are not much of a burden compared to the problems they have to face in their world. But I’m sure everyone who’s still in school or was not too long ago will recognise that there are many things that can make an ordinary day at school seem like hell, something you might at some point even think you don’t have the power to endure any longer.
No matter if it’s bullying, problems at home or “just” the normal pressure that comes with what seems to be a planned out school “career” nowadays with parents apparently thinking that their kids are doomed if they don’t study for hours every day once they attend kindergarten.
And everyone who was lucky enough to have some loving friends helping them through such days will tell you that there are some little things that can mean so much, that can give you the confidence you need to face these problems once again, that can be a game changer in the harsh world school has become for many kids.
A hug from a friend is one of these simple, yet incredible powerful things.
I would be preaching to the choir here if I point out that this is, of course, utter nonsense; that there is nothing sexual about hugs. That not every time people touch each other it’s a ritual to initiate a wild orgy of teenage sex full of sweat, cum and endorphin. Hugs are just that: hugs.
But some societies are so scared by the idea of two people loving each other, as friends or as a couple, that they don’t even dare to use the word hug. Instead they come up with technical terms that are outright disgusting in their lifeless blandness. A hug becomes a “PDA”, a “Public Display of Affection”, a term that would easily fit into Orwell’s 1984.
Once they do this it can’t really surprise anyone when they start to outlaw hugs. More and more schools all over the Unites States actually state in their school rules that hugs are not allowed or that students can’t come closer than 30 centimetres to each other. The school that banned hugging as an “unsuitable physical interaction” was just the latest example, this is going on for years now.
The hypocrisy of a system in which weapons are glorified and a film about a game that consists of kids slaughtering each other is celebrating one of the most successful opening weekends in cinema history while the mere slip of a nipple of a female singer causes enough controversy and outrage to keep the nation’s media busy for weeks and weeks is hardly worth pointing out since it’s so painfully obvious. It’s this kind of hypocrisy that leads to schools prohibiting hugs while bullying gay teens is defended as “freedom of religion”.
It this really the world we want to live in? Is this how we want the next generations to grow up? Under the impression that affection is something dirty, that caring for each other is “inappropriate”? I don’t have any solutions handy here. But I do believe that it’s time to do something. To make it better for American kids and to make sure this attitude won’t spread to other parts of the world.
But what do you do in the face of insanity?
Hi Friends;The image to the right of two teens hugging may come to some as inappropriate. Should it?
Is this one then so horrible as well?
Who gets to suddenly have that power to dictate how we will demonstrate camaraderie? What gave them the right?
As an adult, I look back on my school years and think of the many times a simple bit of contact would have gone such a very long way. A simple sharing of the moment, a gesture to let someone know they are not alone. Oh I wish I could be a parent in that school district, because I would organize a demonstration of kids walking arm in arm, of their parents walking right behind them daring the pompous school officials to say a word. Well, I'd like to think I would. I'd think about it.... The problem is that we as a people have a tendency to simply shrug and let things slide by. We just want to live our lives - go to work, eat too much while we watch a bit of tv and yell for our favorite teams. In our desire to simply live our own lives, we lose track of the psychos that keep finding their way into leadership, like mosquitoes to a bare arm in August, until suddenly we find ourselves being sucked dry. So, I declare a war...
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| Shel Silverstein... the greatest poet ever! |
Sorry.... not quite part of the post, but had to be in here somewhere....
Well, I've made my point. Hugs everyone...... Oh, damn.
