This is a first for me. I’m actually writing a blog post in response to another blog by one of my family members. My cousin Ashley has decided to venture into the world of…bloghood? Bloggery? I guess the formal term is online journal, and the less formal blogging, but the word nerd in me is making a case for a new word. After all, “selfie” did find its way into the dictionary last year.
But as usual, I digress. First, let me formally welcome Ashley to the blogosphere (that’s already a word guys). If you ever get bored with my absentee blog, pop on over to hers; she’s already written more this year than I did all of last year. But the particular focus of my attention, and what indeed drew me to her blog, was her blog where she mentioned that her daughter is being bullied. Her oldest daughter (she is the mother of three and stepmother to another few) is nine years old (don’t laugh, but I had to go to my cousin’s blog to find this out). For those of you who gasped at the nine-year-old being bullied, please know that it is not uncommon at that age, or any school-age for that matter, to be bullied or picked on; it is not just something that’s relegated to adolescent or teen years. Heck, I was bullied at different intervals in school, albeit briefly for the most part. I remember having some random older kid on the bus pull my hair when I was in kindergarten.
What saddens me about the whole bullying problem that my cousin is experiencing--besides the fact that it is occurring at all) is that she, and so many other kids like her are at a disadvantage of being alone to an extent. In order for me to explain more fully, let me go back to my own example of bullying. The reason I can say that most of the bullying I received was short-lived was because of the presence of my family. At any given moment growing up, I had at least four to six cousins attending high school with me. And one of the things that my grandmother always instilled in us was regardless of whatever, we are family. We may in fight and get on each other’s nerves, but nobody but NOBODY outside of that circle of blood would be able behave negatively toward us. Whether it was pulling someone aside and having a little “chat” or getting downright physical (one cousin pushed some girl off a school bus because that person was picking on another cousin). And let me remind you: I have A LOT of cousins: first, second, third, all the way down to fifth and trust me when I tell you, we all feel this way. Reading my “little” cousin’s story of my even littler cousin’s story sparked those same feelings in me as when I was in school sticking up for one of my cousins. And as you know, I’ve hit the 40 marker.
And it brought to mind the fact that she and so many of my younger family members don’t have that type of protection. I and yet another cousin were discussing this very fact just a few weeks ago. She has two daughters, and one day, the younger came home upset that the older didn’t acknowledge her in school. As a result, the older of the sisters got in trouble. Her mother told her that she should always speak to her sister in school, especially in light of the fact that they would realistically see one another in passing in the hallway.
Nowadays, families are so disjointed. Take for instance where I live. My son will likely never go to his K-12 with another soul that he knows prior to school. Any kinship that he forges will have to be on the strength of his personality. It is with this spirit that I try to get together with my girlfriends and cousins who have children around the same age, just so he can feel that family connection we did growing up. Granted, they may not actually end up going to school together until well into their high school years if that. But at least he will have at least a small vestige of what I did.
