Dear Mr. ___,
I think you are an asshole. I'm writing that partly to be totally honest that this letter may not be unbiased, but also because I have seen you around town a couple of times in the 15 or so years since I was your student, and I get the impression that you don't have any clue that you're an asshole.
And I don't even think that because of the way you treated me, which was abhorrent. Instead, I'm writing on behalf of this girl in our class whose name I don't even remember and who I've never seen since I left your school. Now that I think of it, I don't think I'd even recognize her if I saw her.
She was not very nice to me. She excluded me and generally capitalized on my unpopularity to maintain some semblance of the same among the rest of the class. You remember me, right? I was fat, awkward, and smart? Well, she wasn't really any of those things.
One day when we were in sixth grade and preparing for your beloved science fair, you visited our classroom and we all raised our hands with ideas for experiments. She wanted to do an experiment testing whether shampoos really do change the structure of hair like in commercials which show two drastically different close-ups of the hair treated by a competitor's shampoo and by the advertised shampoo. I thought that was a pretty cool idea.
You shot it down very unkindly. I remember. I think she probably went home and cried. You said that there was no way to really test that, that the results were too subjective, and you went so far as to imply that she was a typical dumb blond for thinking it up. I remember there was chuckling between you and another teacher. It was horrible. You are horrible.
I just wanted you to know that. You were so mean that I remember 16 years later how you crushed someone ELSE's feelings. Even someone I didn't really like.
Jen
ps - I still really like science, despite you.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Christmas Eve Letter to My Son
Dear Andrew,
You are 5 and a half, it's your sixth Christmas, and you believe in Santa Claus. Despite my best attempts at honesty, you recoil aghast when I say, "Well, it's fun to pretend that Santa is real, but we know that it's not really possible for him to really, in reality, honestly, visit all those houses in one night. It's just a fun story." Perhaps fortunately, you choose to believe your father, your grandfather, and pretty much everyone else you know. Over me. No, I'm not hurt. Too much.
I just don't want to lie to you. I don't want to spend time explaining gravity, inertia, and friction to you while I push you on the swing, and then throw it all out the window when a jolly guy in red comes along in December. I don't want to teach you about evolution and creationism, and why one is based in physical observation and one is based in Biblical literalism, and then agree that somehow that fat dude gets down the chimney each night. How? Magic!
But that's really only part of what I want you to know. Sure, I want to teach you about science, and about blind faith, and I want you to choose science. Of course, because it's the way of thinking that is based on actual facts, and that has the highest likelihood of helping you make decisions throughout your life. Good, solid decisions that have nothing to do with being "nice" so you can get presents. Or go to heaven. I want you to be you, nice because you ARE. Have these qualities because they are intrinsic to your nature: generosity, honesty, compassion, tenacity, bravery, clarity, free thought. Not because you think you'll get a Powerminers Lego set from the big guy (You are getting one, by the way, but not until your birthday. Sorry. We thought you would like a Mater racetrack more.).
The really important thing, beyond goodness for its own sake, is that these ideas: science, faith, Santa -- they're all really only stories. None of them is reality itself. I'm telling you this in a letter because I don't think you'll understand it now. They are like glasses that you put on and through which you can see the world. And there are BILLIONS of them. Sure, you can see the world through a scientific lens, and I would be proud. But it would still only be one way of seeing, and incomplete. You could also walk around looking at everything through the lens of the Santa story. But it would be totally ridiculous. What? Somebody has cancer? Santa must have given them that because they were naughty. You see my point?
My point is, don't take belief too seriously. For me, that's the real message of Christmas. At least this year. Ask me again another year. I'll probably believe something different.
Love,
Mom
You are 5 and a half, it's your sixth Christmas, and you believe in Santa Claus. Despite my best attempts at honesty, you recoil aghast when I say, "Well, it's fun to pretend that Santa is real, but we know that it's not really possible for him to really, in reality, honestly, visit all those houses in one night. It's just a fun story." Perhaps fortunately, you choose to believe your father, your grandfather, and pretty much everyone else you know. Over me. No, I'm not hurt. Too much.
I just don't want to lie to you. I don't want to spend time explaining gravity, inertia, and friction to you while I push you on the swing, and then throw it all out the window when a jolly guy in red comes along in December. I don't want to teach you about evolution and creationism, and why one is based in physical observation and one is based in Biblical literalism, and then agree that somehow that fat dude gets down the chimney each night. How? Magic!
But that's really only part of what I want you to know. Sure, I want to teach you about science, and about blind faith, and I want you to choose science. Of course, because it's the way of thinking that is based on actual facts, and that has the highest likelihood of helping you make decisions throughout your life. Good, solid decisions that have nothing to do with being "nice" so you can get presents. Or go to heaven. I want you to be you, nice because you ARE. Have these qualities because they are intrinsic to your nature: generosity, honesty, compassion, tenacity, bravery, clarity, free thought. Not because you think you'll get a Powerminers Lego set from the big guy (You are getting one, by the way, but not until your birthday. Sorry. We thought you would like a Mater racetrack more.).
The really important thing, beyond goodness for its own sake, is that these ideas: science, faith, Santa -- they're all really only stories. None of them is reality itself. I'm telling you this in a letter because I don't think you'll understand it now. They are like glasses that you put on and through which you can see the world. And there are BILLIONS of them. Sure, you can see the world through a scientific lens, and I would be proud. But it would still only be one way of seeing, and incomplete. You could also walk around looking at everything through the lens of the Santa story. But it would be totally ridiculous. What? Somebody has cancer? Santa must have given them that because they were naughty. You see my point?
My point is, don't take belief too seriously. For me, that's the real message of Christmas. At least this year. Ask me again another year. I'll probably believe something different.
Love,
Mom
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