I have had lots of thoughts, which seen to bedevil me every waking hour, but many of them fall short of the high standards I’ve set for myself, and which you, my three loyal readers, have come to expect from me.
But, what the hell, sometimes one has to just let loose and spew whatever random and variegated shit comes flitting into one’s mind, so, here we go.
One of the big hurdles I’ve consistently tripped over from childhood is seeing that I have some worth. I grew up being ground down slowly. Failing to live up to my “potential”, and listening to my mother and father and teachers harp on me for not doing better, for not caring more, ground me down. Being the youngest kid on class, skinny and mild, with a weird name drew bullies toward me. I was a regular bully magnet. That ground me down. When most of the other kids made fun of me or just kind of, well, they didn’t exactly shun me, but, at best, most of them ignored me. That ground me down.
One of my earliest school memories is one of stopping at a fast food place for lunch on the way back from a field trip somewhere. I’ve forgotten where we went, but I remember the lunch. We stopped in Media at a fast food place, and I guess the teachers and parents who went along must have all gotten us our food, since we were in first through third grades, and we got our food and sat down to eat, and I ended up sitting alone. One of the parents came by and sat down at my table and asked why I was eating by myself, and I told her it was because “I’m no good.”
I answered it matter-of-factly, the way I’d have answered anything else she might have asked that was self evident, like, what color was my hair or something. It really set her back on her heels. I remember that, she had no clue what to say to something like that, and seemed to think I was saying it for effect, or at least that’s what it seems like looking back on it. But, no, I was only answering her. She asked me something and I answered her.
And it was like that my whole life. I guess it still is. It’s been better the last few years, since I now know why I am the way I am, and that, as the guy told me who told me what the tests I took showed, “This is not a character flaw.” But a lifetime of learning that you’re inadequate, that you’re “no good” takes a long time to unlearn, and It’s slow going.
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I bring this up because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the children who don’t seem to have much going for them, or who might feel like they might not have much going for them, and I don’t want to see them struggle with this they way I have. Children with learning disabilities, I guess, deal with this. They stand out, they aren’t like the others. Poor children, too, might feel this way, children in third world countries.
I lived for two years in a small town in Honduras. That’s it’s own story. More than one story, really, too many stories to even set down, at least now. But I lived there, and fell in love with it, and now I work with a little school in the town I lived in, trying to help them find English speaking teachers, and with their expenses. I sometimes wonder whether children in a small town like that, in a poor country, might also feel worthless, as I did. The important people all come from America, or Europe. Not Honduras. I don’t know if the younger children fully understand how little they mean, and their country means, to the rest of the world. The only time the rest of the world hears about their country, or other countries like Honduras, is if there’s a civil war or an earthquake or a golpe or a hurricane or some other disaster.
I don’t know, but my guess is that they do. I know that by the time they’re in high school, they sometimes feel like they’re worth less, and their country is worth less, because I’ve heard them say that to me from time to time. And I feel a bond with them. I feel a bond with their country. This is the one place I’ve ever lived where I felt like I really fit in, I felt like I belonged. I was a gringo, and I didn’t speak Spanish, and I stuck out wherever I went, but it felt like home anyway.
Looking back, I see that it’s because, as I tell people often, “It’s like the whole country has ADD.” And that sounds like a joke, and in some ways it is, but it’s also true. That’s its own whole post, and maybe I’ll write that next. But lately, I’ve come to see that I also felt so home there because they, too, the country, and everybody who lives there, are kind of struggling. I guess I’ve learned to identify with underdogs, the outcasts, the misfits, with those who get overlooked or mocked or scorned. And it is a kind of overlooked, mocked, scorned place. It’s a joke, a punchline, as I so often have been.
There’s a scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where one character brings up the fact that Indiana Jones was run out of Honduras. I always took that as a way of pointing up his disreputableness. I mean, damn, if they didn’t want him back in Honduras, he must be some hell of a reprobate.
Honduras is the place O. Henry went when he wanted to flee the world. Honduras is the place where William Walker, the clown who tried to set himself up as dictator of Nicaragua ended up before a firing squad. It was the original banana republic. It’s a place that can fill in in any tale or movie or book to stand for nowhere, for some no ’count, jerkwater joke of a place, the place where the losers and clowns might end up when they can’t hack it in the real world.
And the people who live there are even more nondescript. In the stories and movies, Hondurans don’t figure into it at all, only the losers from elsewhere who end up there are worth bothering with, and only because they have the good luck to have at least started out in some “real” country.
Now, mind you, I’m not saying that that’s what Honduras is; I’m only saying that that’s what most Americans think of it--when they think of it at all. But, well, I identify with that. I guess I feel like that’s what a lot of the world always thought of me. As I said, I identify with the losers, the overlooked, the mocked, the ones who end up as punchlines to somebody else’s jokes. I do because I’m one of those, too.
Well, this has wandered farther afield than I had meant it to. And here I even said I wasn’t going to write about Honduras in this post, and I went and did it anyway. But I’ll try to drag this back to where I meant it to be going, and I’ll try to wrap it up.
So...
Those kids in the school I work with. I don’t want them to feel less worthy. I don’t want them to feel like they don’t have anything to give to the world. I don’t want children who struggle in school to feel that way. I don’t want anybody to grow up, as I did, thinking, “I’m no good.”
We all have something to do with our lives. Some of us will do great, big, spectacular things. Some will do things that are less showy, but no less worthy. Somebody who builds a water plant in some little Honduran town, so the people who live there can have clean water to drink for once, that’s a big deal. Nobody who does that will ever get any prize for it, but it’s important work, since it makes people’s lives better. And the person who goes to school to learn about water safety, and the engineering to make it work, and then goes out into the campo and does it for some little forgotten town, has done something great.
And some of those children at that school are going to do something like that. Who knows what else they might do? Someday, somebody, somewhere is going to cure cancer. I don’t know who. I do know that I won’t be the one, but I don’t know who will. And it’s just as likely that the person who could do it is sitting in one of those classrooms at the Jeanette Kawas School in Tela, Honduras as it is that it’s anybody else. It could be a child with ADD or some other learning disability, who might otherwise get written off.
I don’t want to see that happen, and not only because I don’t want the world to miss out on the cure for cancer; I don’t want to see it happen because these children have worth, whatever they end up doing with their lives, even if they end up doing nothing more notable than going on to live happy lives.
I’m still trying to learn that I have some worth. What I’d really like to see is a world in which nobody else ever has to learn it.
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