I didn't really hear an apology in there...

During last year's 30 Days of Blogging, I addressed a question that my friend Sandy asked, which was, "Do you have a yearbook full of crossed out pictures?" It turned out that yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Doesn't everyone? I was thinking about it at this time last year because one of the people with an X on his face had actually spoken to my mom, to ask if I'd ever forgiven him. I reflected on the idea of forgiveness briefly, and decided that no, not only had I not forgiven, but I didn't ever intend to.

Here's the thing: I don't think about those people in my day to day life. This is the luxury of growing older and moving away. I don't see those people at the mall or the grocery store or any of the other places that I go, and I pretty much only take out my yearbooks if someone sends me a Facebook friend request and I can't remember who they are. I don't wake up in the morning thinking about how much I dislike those people, but if something happens to remind me that those people exist, then most of the time I do remember that I dislike them, and for the five minutes it takes me to be distracted by something shiny I am angry and irritated and hateful all over again, but then I move on.

That doesn't mean that I forgive them. Like Natalie Merchant sings in "Seven Years", "I might forget you, but not forgive." I reflected on this last year, and was a little disappointed in myself over not being a better person and not being willing to forgive those people.

It turns out that I haven't really matured any regarding this particular issue in the past year.

How do I know, you ask?

Because that guy who talked to my mom last year contacted me on Facebook about a month ago.

For the purposes of this blog entry, we're just going to call him Mr. X. (Not to be confused with Madame X, Professor X, Malcolm X, or Dr. Double X.) At the beginning of last month, Mr. X poked me on Facebook.

I chose to ignore this.

I have nothing to say to Mr. X, and I'm certainly not going to be spurred into saying something by a Facebook poke. A long letter cataloging a multitude of sins against me, possibly including abject begging for forgiveness and several forms of groveling? That I might respond to. A Facebook poke? There's a short pier somewhere waiting for you to take a long walk.

A few days of silence went by. No further pokes, and no need for me to give this any further thought. Then Mr. X went to a photo of me on a mutual friend's page, and "liked" it.

Clearly, Mr. X wanted my attention. I began to respond, then removed all of the profanity, then made sure that it still carried a tone of hostility that would deter further contact.

I'm going to assume that you sent that poke on Sunday by accident.

Actually, I assume that you're a moron, but I'm trying not to open with insults.

Mr. X responded: Just saying Hi Joel.... It's been 21 yrs.... A lot has changed in 21 yrs..., Hope all is well...

A lot has changed in 21 years, you say? You know what hasn't changed? I still think you're a horrible person, and you still aren't apologizing. I decided immediately that this was enough dialogue for me.

Feel free to say hi in another 21 years or so, and have a nice day.

There's some traffic outside, and no one playing in it. Go work on that.

I'd like to point out that I haven't sworn and haven't insulted anyone, and that I still haven't been apologized to. Mr. X responded with a "thumbs up" graphic, and wrote: Lol! Am I gonna see you at class reunion?

At this point I wondered if I hadn't been clear, somehow. Was I not being hostile enough? Was my open rudeness coming across as humor? I'd always thought Mr. X had a kind of dumb cunning, but was it possible that he was just dumb?

Before I could answer his question, he wrote again: My kids say hi..... Thought you might wanna say hi at the reunion.....

And then he sent me pictures of his four children.

What, exactly, are those pictures supposed to tell me? Do you imagine that I'm going to think you're a changed person just because you forgot to put on a rubber four times? And what on earth would I say to them when I saw them at the reunion? "Hi. In high school your daddy was a total asshole piece of shit, and I sincerely prayed a number of times that Jesus would run him over with a school bus and set him on fire in the street. What grade are you in?" All of a sudden we're in that scene in Kill Bill when The Bride explains to Copperhead that, "You and I have unfinished business. And not a goddamned thing you've done in the subsequent four years including getting knocked up is going to change that," except in that scene Copperhead actually apologized more than once and I have yet to see the word "sorry" appear on my screen.

Once again, I bit back my urge to swear, and actually struggled to find a nice way to say "Fuck the fuck off":

I won't be at the reunion. I already see and talk to the people that I would want to.

I'm sure you feel that you're a nice person now, and you might even actually be, but you're not a person that I want to know.


That is the nicest I could have possibly been. Romy and Michele said worse things to Christy Masters than I typed right there. I showed a tremendous amount of restraint, and I lied. I don't believe that you might actually be a nice person now. I don't believe that you'd ever have any idea of how to even pretend to be a nice person. I'm willing to bet that you're so far from being a nice person that the light from "nice person" will never reach you in our lifetime. I find it more believable that you're still a bully and still an asshole, especially since you still haven't managed to apologize and you somehow think that 21 years without talking balances out 5 years of verbal and physical harassment. And the reunion? You think I'm going to the reunion to voluntarily spend time with people like you when I spent eighth to twelfth grade counting down the time until I never had to speak to you again? Someone would have to drive up to my house with a dumptruck full of money and a handful of Clark bars to get me to that reunion, and then there better be an open bar and a lot of fried cheese.

Mr. X finally seemed to understand that I didn't feel like chatting: Truthfully you still wouldnt want to know me.... and i am a nice respectful person...Just saying Hi Joel..... Take care, hope all is well.....

All was well until you started poking me.

And you still haven't apologized.

And I'm still mad about it.

I talked to my mom about this after it happened, since she apparently still sometimes encounters and speaks to Mr. X. My mom wants me to be a better person, and understands that I also want myself to be a better person, so she tried to offer some different perspectives.

"Maybe he's changed. Or maybe he's really sick. You know, thinking about his life and stuff. Maybe he's in a twelve step program."

Maybe he is.

But I realized, in thinking about this, that I don't care. I don't care what his reason is, or what his circumstances are now, because I still remember what his circumstances were then, when he had the upper hand. Every day, he made a conscious choice to make my life worse. Every day, for five years. Every day, he had a choice to be nice, or even to be neutral, and he decided to be hurtful instead. Every day, and even though those days were 21 years ago, I still remember them when people remind me. Every day he had something I wanted: to be left alone.

Now I have something he wants.

Now I have the upper hand.

And I'm no better than he was.

"Do you have a yearbook full of crossed out pictures?"

My parents arrived today for a long weekend visit, and brought a box of stuff from home that I sorted when I was in New York last November. It's mostly books, and includes my high school and college yearbooks.

A few months ago a few of us were discussing high school yearbooks, and I said something that made my friend Sandy ask, "Do you have a yearbook full of crossed-out pictures?" I admitted that I did have at least one, and based on the package that I received today that one would be the tenth grade yearbook:



I remember tenth grade as the worst year of high school, and the number of crossed out photos in the yearbook seems to bear that out. Flipping through it and studying the targets of my x-ing spree, there are people that I don't remember at all, people that I still never want to speak to again (the photo above, for example, was not chosen at random when I was flipping through the book), and some people that I speak to fairly regularly on Facebook.

That last category surprised me, as I remember having the same friends all the way through school, but apparently I was a more forgiving person that I ever remember being, at least between tenth grade and now.

That doesn't mean that I want to forgive the people in the second category.

They have x-ed out faces for a reason.

The whole reason I thought about this, though, is that at dinner tonight my mom actually brought up someone from high school who is still friends with my sibling.

"He asked your brother if you've ever forgiven him."

"Why would I?"

I feel kind of bad about that, because I know that I should be the bigger person, especially since I don't even see or speak to these people anymore. Forgiving them wouldn't cost me anything, and it's not like we'd suddenly start hanging out or something now that we're friends again. As I told my mom at dinner, one of the benefits of moving far away is that I no longer have to think of those people at all, so why would I even think about forgiving them as I go about my daily life? If they're really that inconsequential, though, why not forgive them? What does it cost me other than some sort of misguided loyalty to my teenage self? Maybe they had the upper hand then, but I apparently have it now if they're asking for forgiveness, and the angry teenager that still lives somewhere inside of me is more than willing to withhold that forgiveness if it makes them feel bad, even if only briefly.

I guess I just feel bad that I recognize that I'm not always the person that I'd like to be.

Last weekend, part 1

I didn't really go anywhere this weekend, because we were supposed to have rain and wind and tornado weather, so I got into doing laundry and reading and stuff instead. As such, my weekend pretty much looked like this:



with a little bit of this:



and a dash of Jeannie's kid thrown in for good measure. Not really exciting, I know, so let's talk about last weekend instead.

On Friday night after work I went down to the World's Fair Park for the 2010 Breaking the Silence event. Breaking the Silence is a local even organized by area LGBT organizations as part of the National Day of Silence, which fights anti-gay bullying and harassment in local high schools. Even though I don't know any LGBT high school students, or really many high school students at all, I think it's incredibly brave to come out in high school. My high school didn't have a Gay Straight Alliance, and if they had I wouldn't have joined because I was still working that out for myself, but maybe it would have been a little bit less of a struggle if they did.

The event started with a period of silence lasting several minutes, during which we stared at the people on stage and read the signs the front row was holding:



If you click that photo, the signs will be big enough to read, and you'll see things like, "I am afraid to hold my boyfriend's hand", "I found death threats in my locker", and "No one is proud of me". It's incredibly heartbreaking to read those things, and to know that they are true. LGBT youth are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than straight teenagers, and the most terrible thing about that loss is that it's preventable. Those suicides, which are estimated to number in the hundreds, are a direct result of discrimination, hatred, and an appalling lack of equality in our society, and they are the reason why LGBT youth need every ally they can get.

After the moment of silence was over, a chorus sang "True Colors" (everybody loves the "Glee" arrangement of that now; I hear it everywhere and have it on my own iPod) while the kids out front turned their signs over:





and that's why I think they're so brave. Even in the face of oppression, there's always hope.

The whole experience was a little odd for me because I spent a good part of last week in an email dialogue with my high school about issues related to this. Two weeks ago they emailed everyone who had listed themselves in the old alumni directory and asked if we would go re-register at their new, updated page, but when I went to do so I found myself somewhat put off by the "married life" section. The name caught my eye first, and then I got more annoyed as I read the section and discovered that you could be married or not, and could only list the name of a spouse. What if you were widowed? Divorced? Unmarried, or unable to get married, but in a committed relationship? Where were the boxes for those people?

Rather than complete the survey, I sent an email to the webmaster:

Hi!

I started to update my contact information on the new webpage, but was a little put off by the "married life" section. As one of many gay IRC alumni, I feel that it would be more representative if the section included a space for partner information and maybe a more inclusive title, like "family life". You may get more of a response that way, as all of the alumni could feel included.

I think that's a little bitchy, but not terrible. I waited a week without a response, and mentioned it to my mom on the phone. She got all kinds of irritated, especially since the current superintendant was the assistant principal when we were students and she never liked him, and wanted to go to the school board meeting to make a complaint, but I told her to cool her jets and at least let me send a followup email before she went into full nuclear offensive mode.

I emailed the superintendant directly:

I’m not sure that you’d remember me, but I am a member of the class of 1993, and think that you were Assistant Principal when I was a student. I’d double check, but my yearbooks are at home with my parents, who still live and pay taxes in the district. While I’ve traveled pretty far from Philly since graduating, I still visit often, and have watched the changes and expansions at the high school with interest.

I’m writing to you because I received an email from the IRC webmaster last week, inviting me to sign up for the new alumni database. I followed the link provided to fill in my demographic information and discovered a problem: the “married life” section. The only options given are for alumni to be married or unmarried, which is not inclusive of all alumni. As one of four gay or lesbian alumni that I know of in my graduating class alone, I’m disappointed that the survey does not allow me to list a partner or to reflect that I may be in a partnered relationship. Thinking of my other classmates, several of whom I am still in contact with, this section also does not allow them to reflect a divorced or widowed status.

It is disappointing to see that a directory that is supposed to include all alumni seems to casually disregard the family status of so many of them. I replied to the webmaster’s email with this feedback last Monday, and am even more disappointed to say that not only did I not receive the professional courtesy of a response of any kind, but when I reviewed the survey today before sending this email I noted that no changes have been made. While I always remember Indian River as a welcoming place for a diverse population of students, I am saddened to see that this no longer seems to be the case, based on the way that the alumni are viewed.

That last part is a bit of a fabrication, as I actually remember my high school as having some pretty severe issues with racial tension, but I wanted to try to end on a positive note after using the word "disappointed" about three hundred times in one email.

This finally provoked a response, but not from the superintendant himself. Instead, he delegated my letter out to someone in the business office who spent two paragraphs explaining that they were all gone for spring break and that I should have used the "Contact Us" button rather than replying to the webmaster, and then went on to explain that they had used an outside vendor for the alumni form, that they agreed that my concerns were valid, and that they would contact the vendor to see about making changes. I sent him a nice response thanking them for their attention, and then he wrote back to say that the vendor actually can't make any changes at this time, but would consider it for future updates to the software.

My reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, it's really nice that they responded to my concern and attempted to find a solution. On the other hand, it's kind of sad that when the school district was looking for an updated product to begin with, nobody read this and thought, "Hey, this isn't really inclusive". Maybe next time they work on something like this, they'll think of that.

Like I said before, there's always hope.