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Return to Kindergarten
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by: SemiCharmedChck
date: September 13, 2001
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In the past weeks, we have seen the horrors of what hate can do. Hate can kill, hate can torture, and hate can shake an entire nation. While hate on that level isn’t prominent in our lives as teenagers, we still experience, feel, and feel the effects of hate.
When we were all in kindergarten, things were simple. All the kids played together. Sure, there was always the weird kid who ate glue, and the kid who was kind of mean, but despite that, everyone got along. By first grade, we had discovered the horrible disease known as “kooties”. The kids who were different had kooties, the opposite sex, weird kids, outcasts, and these children were to be avoided at all costs, much like leapers. When we reach second grade, everyone has a role, a social status if you will. There are the athletic kids, the “cool” kids, smart kids, and a bunch of other categories. I, personally have always been the mousy quiet girl that sat in the back of the room and got straight A’s. Of course that wasn’t really me, but that was my role, my niche, and it’s almost impossible to break out of a role, once you’ve been assigned it.
Now we’re in high school and the days of kooties are long gone. Yet the stereotypes, roles, and alliances we made back in grade school still exist. Only now, the pain of this type of hate can be much more traumatic than the name-calling of second grade. We all know this is true. All of us, no matter what our “status”, color, nationality, sexuality, or religion is, we have all experienced the pain of stereotypes. And sad to say, we are all in some way guilty of causing someone else to feel this pain.
So what will it take to stop the hate in our lives? We need to return to simpler days. We need to go back to a point in our lives where there were no social statuses, no roles, no stereotypes. In short, we all need to go back to kindergarten. We need to remember when we made no distinction between black and white, Christian and Muslim, Asian and Hispanic. We need to remember how it was to not care who you were playing with, all that mattered was that you were friends. So this is my challenge to you, and to myself : Don’t let hate rule your life. Return to Kindergarten.
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