A Paper on Friendship

A friend of mine is attempting to write a paper for his composition class, with the prompt of "Write a scene from your childhood in which you learned something." So I thought I would give the prompt a go. Here it is!

The Perils of Friendship

I’ve always been that kid. The one who, during nap-time, would roll other kids out of their cots in an attempt get them to play with me and the one who, when everyone else was laughing, made a joke about uterine chunks that killed the mood. (I killed the mood so hard it’s second cousin, by marriage, felt a little ill.) Of course I was always well intentioned, I just wanted to be friends, but good lord! I was obnoxious! I had difficulty with the finer points of such complex tasks as sharing, turn taking and listening.

Now, to be clear, this is not leading up to another sob story about how I had no friends and about how all of the other kids were terribly mean. In fact, in elementary school, I had a best friend!

Her name was Laura, she lived down the street from me and her family was Mormon. Her parents would not let her sleep over at my house, I can only assume it was because atheist’s houses had demons hiding in the toilet, ready to eat good Mormon girls, but they were happy enough to take me to Church with them, and I was grateful enough to go.

In fact, Laura was very magnanimous toward me. We spent all of our free time together, except when she had other friends over, and when we played our games together she would kindly tell me that I was best suited to play the villain, and I was pleased to receive the advice. (I’ve always been big on self-improvement.) The Eden of childhood friendship cannot last forever, however, and I was, all too soon, banished from paradise to wander the barren slopes of friendlessness, left a pariah and forced to toil for my social interaction.

Laura had moved away. I was heartbroken. Before she left, though, I made doubly sure she knew what my phone number was, as she did not yet know what her new number was going to be, and I planned on staying best friends forever! This tragedy was not to be goodbye! Oddly enough, her family still hasn’t gotten around to setting up a phone in their new place.

The summer after Laura left my parents decided to send me to a day camp. Perhaps they were trying to assuage and distract me from my pain; perhaps they merely wanted me out of the house for a while. All I know is that the next April I had a brand new little brother. Regardless, I toddled off to camp lonely and ready to find a remedy.

Lo and behold, on the first day, in ceramics class, I met Bob! She was two years older then me and SO COOL. She had blue hair and a boy’s name and she could use the pottery wheel and she was willing to talk to me! I had found her! The fabled new friend! It was thrilling.

Of course I talked to her. That is how friendship is formed. Conversation. I told her all about Laura and my new dog and my older brother, who was awesome but annoying, and my boat and my games and my books and my toys, and I told her all about how everyone at my school was annoying and dumb and how everyone here at camp was awesome and cool. And Bob talked to me. She told me where she and her other friend, Anna, were meeting for lunch.

Ah, those were a wondrous three weeks! Bob, Anna and I would meet in the same place everyday for lunch (I always arrived first!) and the three of us would hang-out. They showed me their Invader Zim comic books and I made them Zucchini bread. They didn’t eat the Zucchini bread, but it’s the thought that counts, right? I even followed them into the bathroom to tell them all about myself. It was glorious. We were friends.

One day, in the last week of camp, I saw Bob in ceramics, as usual. We spoke and were friends. And then, at lunchtime, I showed up at the normal meeting place. I sat down and waited. I was hungry and they were late. I ate my lunch and I waited. And I waited. And my friends never came.

Kids These Days

So, there's this kid. He's 14. And the new conservative whiz kid. He's in the eighth grade, and a home schooled Christian. Right there I have some problems. Home schooling is bad, it closes a person off form society. It's not just an issue of social retardation but also that they well never meet opposing view points. How can one form opinions if one never has them tested? How can one understand social issues if one is so isolated they never meet a minority?

The very thought of a child Conservative pundit rubs me the wrong way. I am sure he is very intelligent, and he probably knows more about politics then I do, if his biography is accurate, but it seems to me that a child who is given this much of a soap box to stand on, particularly one who holds traditionally conservative view points, is going to be full of himself. Smug and implacable in his assurance that he holds the right and true ground. Children think in black and white. They have issues empathizing and inferring and thinking critically in general. It's why many kids have problems with algebra. My biggest problem with the far right is that it is dominated by fundamental Christians who want to legislate religion. One of my biggest problems with mainstream Conservatism is it's lack of nuance. There seem to be no shades of grey. The poor should work harder. The rich get what they deserve. Personal responsibility fixes all problems.

Life is just not that simple. (Liberals do this too, of course, socialized medicine will not be an instant perfect fix, but this fact undermines my point, so I will ignore it.) What I fear is that a child conservative is going to combine and amplify these undesirable traits. When added to his Christian background untempered by life experience, this hot mess is going to create one unbearable person.

In light of all this I thought that I would take a gander over to his website.

Effffffffff. I was right. Resoundingly so.

The first thing I noticed when I skimmed through his blog entries was that they were dominated by divisive rhetoric. Liberals. Conservatives. Us. Them. Moderatism was treated as a greater enemy then liberalism. Compromise was villainized. There is a series of articles called "Hammering the Dems."

My favorite (And by favorite I mean most frustrating) bits show up on page six. I can only quote.

"If you listen to the rest of the song, besides its first line, then you will here the following, “Barack the Magic Negro, lives in DC. The LA Times they called him that….” In other words, it is merely making fun of the mainstream media’s own statement about Barack Obama. "

That's right. He is defending “Barack the Magic Negro" as not racist. He also attempts to say that the media paid a disproportionate amount of attention to this while ignoring the Blaggo scandal. I don't know what news he was listening too.

"Liberals are quite lax in their moral viewpoint; actually saying that Liberals even have a moral viewpoint on things is being somewhat generous. The Liberal actually believes that a moral compass is not necessary."

Thank you for treating a large group of people as a monolith. I appreciate it. Also, also, your random assertions are extremely valid. True facts, kid, true facts.

"This Liberal view of morality, that we should push moral views out of the way in political circles, ties directly in with corruption. ... In other words, this basic precept of the Liberal social view is the clear and decisive basis of political corruption. Let’s look at some of the most recent examples of political corruption that highlight this quality:"

Kid. You are NOT winning the scandal wars.

If there is one thing that binds people together, old and young, rich and poor, black and white, liberal and conservative, two examples that are orthogonal to each other, it is stupidity and malice. (Wait... that's two. Oh well.)

Ugh. This kid grates on me.