Just Teasing

Many people have an idyllic image of the rural one- or two-room school. The classes are small. The teachers give individual attention. The older children help those younger or less advanced than themselves. What is there not to like?

The two-room school I attended from kindergarten (all two weeks of it) through eighth grade did, at times, conform to the Little House on the Prairie image. There were only two other children in my grade. I had the same teacher until sixth grade. I remember quite a lot of flexibility in terms of children being able to take more time when they needed it or being allowed to work ahead.

But what I remember most from those years is something very different: persistent, daily, unrelenting teasing.

When I was in about third or fourth grade, it got so bad that the teacher had a conference with every child in the school. The topic: me. The problem with being the object of teasing in a school with only 16 students is that there is nowhere to hide, no group of fellow outcasts to join.

Looking back, I see that I was ripe for teasing. I was a quirky girl who liked to pretend to be characters from my favorite books. For instance, I remember clearly going through a Heidi phase, including making myself snacks of plain bread and hunks of cheese, just as Grandpa made for Heidi and Peter (the difference being that my slabs were cut from big blocks of government cheese, distributed on the Rosebud Indian Reservation where we lived and traded to us for eggs). I wore thick glasses that did not correct a tendency for crossed eyes caused by a congenital condition called Duane’s Syndrome. But do not worry: this is no self-pity story. I was a teaser myself, often using a quick and even sharp tongue to make up for my awkwardness in social situations. I was also quite confident (read: “snotty”) and assertive (read: “bossy”).

I hadn’t thought of those days for a long time until recently when, on a good friend’s suggestion, I read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli (thank you, Ed!):

“And then I saw her. At lunch. She wore an off-white dress so long it covered her shoes. It had ruffles around the neck and cuffs and looked like it could have been her great-grandmother’s wedding gown. Her hair was the color of sand. It fell to her shoulders. Something was strapped across her back, but it wasn’t a book bag. At first I thought it was a miniature guitar. I found out later it was a ukulele.”

This was the girl I was! Well, mostly. Stargirl is more naturally generous and giving, less self-conscious, but I know that if I had read this book when I was eight or nine, not only would I have identified immediately with a kindred imagination, I would have had a kind of informal mentor or role model who was farther along the path I wanted to be on, someone who could withstand teasing without taking it in.

What is your experience with teasing and being teased? How do you feel about teasing?

Perhaps because of my own experience, I am wary of the pat advice that all children just need to learn how to take teasing. While it is true that teasing will not go away, I have yet to meet a single person who feels that the experience of being teased helped her simply to shrug off the feelings or effects, or that it made him a better person. In a SmartGirl.org survey about teasing, respondents indicated that they were teased most often about their appearance, friends, grades, and weight. How many young sensitive girls (or boys) can shrug off negative comments, however playful, about these things?

A good article for parents is “Teasing and Gifted Children,” by Patricia A. Schuler:

“What shouldn’t parents do? Don’t minimize the situation by suggesting that everyone gets teased. Telling children it’s their problem and to stand up for themselves only makes them feel even more inadequate and powerless. Don’t call the teaser and ‘reward’ him/her with an invitation to discuss and negotiate a plan to stop the teasing by offering rewards. Don’t call the teaser’s parents to complain. It may make the situation worse.”

In my case, once the student-teacher conferences were over and the dust had settled, I had made two decisions. The first was that I would study the other children and learn how to fit in better. I began to dress like them, talk like them, like what they liked, not like what they didn’t like. In grade school, I was only partially successful in my project, but by the time I went to our county-wide high school and had a fresh start, I was a pro. I had friends. I was soon elected to student council. All the comments in my yearbooks were “To a really nice girl” and encouraged me to “Stay just the way you are. Don’t change.” I smiled until my cheeks hurt. I laughed at everyone’s jokes. I became whomever I was with. I offended no one. I was very, very good at it.

But if you had asked me what my favorite music was, or movie or book, or what was unique about my inner experience, or what my opinion was about anything, important or otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It took years and years to undo the self-transformation I undertook in grade school, and just as long to begin to realize that my desire not to be teased had become confused with a desire to please everyone, all the time, an impossible if not soul-draining task. What a relief it was in my thirties to get to know myself, all over again.

The second decision grew from something the teacher told me after those embarrassing conferences. She said that the main teaser in the school had, in years past, been the object of chronic teasing herself, and that this had been a pattern in the school for years: someone who was targeted for teasing when young grew into the role of the teaser ring leader.

Hearing this, I vowed that would never happen to me, that I would not forget what I felt like then, and that I would not exclude or judge anyone, ever. I haven’t been always perfect in this regard (my father’s family has a teasing tradition that often fights its way to the surface), but I become more committed to my early promise to myself as I grow older, especially after becoming a parent. It’s not always an easy promise to keep. I feel extreme discomfort when a friend or group speaks negatively about a mutual friend, and sometimes I back away from a relationship rather than participate or even listen. Such seemingly harmless gossip is not the same as teasing, I know, but the result is still that of exclusion, an us vs. them attitude, which is, after all, what teasing is often all about, drawing lines between the teased and the teaser, between who gets to laugh and whom is laughed at, and that’s what I react to in a deep, visceral way.

I also try to remember what the teacher had told me, that many habitual teasers may be acting out old dramas of their own, in part because of shame. When I entered high school, I remember begging my former classmates not to tell anyone about my experiences, for fear that potential new friends would not see the “new me” and that the exclusion would happen all over again. As late as my twenties, if I thought about those early years for any length of time, I felt shame wash over me like a hot wind, and I certainly thought of it as a secret I needed to keep. I can easily see how this shame, however misplaced, could lead some people to lash out in an effort to take back some control of their feelings, even at the expense of others.

I know that many readers might enjoy teasing and may be thinking that teasing just isn’t a big deal. Your family might tease as a matter of course, perhaps good-naturedly. You might be confident that others know that you tease because you love them, or you might even believe they like to be teased. You might think that someone who doesn’t enjoy teasing doesn’t have a good sense of humor. Or you might tease because you haven’t developed other communication skills, or because you aren’t comfortable with direct confrontation.

All I can say is that when I recently read this by Gretchen Rubin in “Thinking about Teasing,” I thought it sounded like heaven:

“[W]hen I was growing up, my family didn’t tease much. Teasing, sarcasm, playful put-downs…none of that. And that made for a very nice atmosphere.”

What’s not to like?