The first thing that comes to my mind that I am probably a perpetrator, target, and a bystander of is gossiping. I hate it. A lot. And yet, I’ll admit, there are times when I catch myself trashing somebody that I don’t even know.
I’ve never really been the kind of person to jump up and down with sparklers in my hand saying “Look at me! Look at me!” So in the vast majority of these situations I end up as the bystander. I wish I could honestly say otherwise, but there you go.
A couple years ago I went to my little brother’s sports game. He was new to the team so I thought I would go and support him. There wasn’t really anything major going on; I was sitting in a fold up chair with one head phone in my ear watching a bunch of kids play their game. All this seems normal, how it should be right? Right.
It wasn’t the players, or the coaches, or the referees that freaked me out. It was all those kid’s parents. There were mothers, on the side lines trash talking the kids on the field. Debating their skill, how they acted in practice, even something as petty has how their uniform seemed to fit. When my brother was put in as goalie the woman standing right next to me groaned and said “No! That kid sucks!” Going on to express her complete opinion about him joining the team and what it would mean for her son as well as his friends. None of it seemed all that positive. Mind you, these kids are 8 or 9.
How the hell do you respond to that?? Should I have said something and made a big scene, stood up for him? Looking back, yeah probably. And if that had happened today I probably would have. But being not that much older myself (10 or 11) I just stared at this women who seemed to be so absorbed in a children’s game that she was willing to diss the new kid. I mean, c’mon. Who gets THAT into a game where the kids aren’t even in middle school yet? She was obviously insecure about herself, her own kid, or whatever. Maybe I’m totally off and she’s just a loser.
Isn’t it strange how certain memories stay with us? This is one that I’ve remembered for a while and it’s always really bothered me. By being a bystander I changed nothing. I effected nothing. Being a bystander is the equivalent of doing nothing. I failed to protect my family, even if it was just words. In that moment I didn’t say anything because I was afraid that the mom would yell at me for being disrespect full, or being rude. Even if that would make her the biggest hypocrite on Earth, my little 10 year old self would have seen it as super embarrassing and probably would have made me want to cry. Fear is what kept me as a bystander, and in certain ways I still struggle with that today. I feel uncomfortable calling out wrongs in the world. Not wrongs by strangers, that’s easy. But wrongs committed against me or my friends.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that this situation pointed out my fear. I could have said the entire fifth paragraph of this blog to that woman’s face and been in the right. But because I was scared stayed a bystander.
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Jessica -- Your voice is so engaging and personable that it makes what you say that much more meaningful. It's so true that it's easy to point out flaws in strangers but that it becomes way harder to do when you or your friends are the one in the wrong...I wish I had a good answer for you, but I think how to react in those situations is something that we'll always struggle to handle in the right and best way, and sometimes what is right in one situation may not be quite right in another, so a hard and fast rule doesn't really work. Overall, very insightful and excellent use of the story about your brother -- it really illustrates your point perfectly.
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