By: Jefferson Weaver
Once upon a time, I knew a little kid named Jimmy.
His parents were neighbors of ours, and Miss Rhonda was asked to babysit him one time. Just once, mind you. My beloved has always had an incredible touch with little kids, and at five years old, Little Jimmy was just the perfect age to be fun.
However, my tender, nurturing wife said she would have cheerfully left Jimmie at our neighborhood park, were it not for the fact she thought so much of our winos and local gang members.
I saw Jimmy whack his family’s very patient dog with a yardstick, then a plastic ballbat, laughing the entire time. The poor dog was a nervous wreck, but never hurt the boy, since Rover was of a breed that would never hurt a child, even one who yanked a dog’s ears, after tackling him to the floor – in the middle of a neighborhood dinner party.
When several adults spoke up, Jimmy’s mom lectured them, then quietly and logically asked the boy how he thought his actions looked, and how they made the dog feel. After all, she said – Mommy was his friend, and he didn’t want to hurt his friend’s feelings, did he?
My mother would have been adopting a dog to replace her missing child.
This couple, who meant well, never spanked Jimmy (and yes, I changed his name). They didn’t go to church, because the Bible made some people feel bad. They attended seminars on child rearing – out of town. They took Jimmy to counseling in utero, and were constantly asking him how he felt.
He wasn’t allowed to have toy guns, or to play competitive sports, because such things might affect him in some negative manner. The bat he used on his poor dog was a gift from a grandfather with hopes the kid might salvage a semi-normal childhood from the iron maiden of madness in which his parents took such pride. Under some circumstances, it was even okay to call people names, because that was how he was expressed himself.
In a way, I felt sorry for the kid. I don’t think he ever had a chance.
My second day attending university classes, I was called names.
I made the mistake of holding the door for two young women coming into the building behind me. While I won’t go into details, they were not pleased with my manners. Suffice to say, their protests were as vulgar as their clothes were outlandish.
While I remember the episode very well—it was rather embarrassing, since they were rather loud and shrill, and standing in the lobby of the old Student Union at UNCW – I got over it. It wasn’t the first, nor the last, time I was called various and sundry things in college. Being a conservative, Southern, white and male were beginning to be bad things in institutions of higher learning 30 years ago. Nobody had guts enough back then to attack Christians; had I been at a better place in my faith back then, I might have been spared some of the vitriol. Nowadays that’s just more fuel for the fire, or so I am led to believe by some who have experienced such and not had the benefit of a “Safe Place”.
I scratch my head at this “Safe Place” trend that is allegedly sweeping colleges and universities. Basically, you can’t say or do anything in those areas – sometimes entire schools – that might offend someone. A young lady in Scotland was punished and (ironically, ridiculed) because she rolled her eyes at a particularly ridiculous notion. Similar things have been going on in this country as well.
College is supposed to be a place where ideas are challenged, and kids are exposed to new ways of thinking. Said kids aren’t supposed to be indoctrinated in politically correct social-speak, although that seems to be standard operating procedure nowadays.
We didn’t have “Safe Places” when we were kids, except for possibly somebody’s grandma’s house. We learned to fight, either with words or with our fists, and we learned to buck up and deal with disappointment. We didn’t get participation trophies. We couldn’t count on getting the same grade as everyone else if we tried hard but still failed.
And we sure as heck didn’t expect the powers-that-be to cuddle us if our feelings got hurt.
Various and sundry experts now say that young people need “safe places,” so their feelings don’t get hurt. I heard a while back about a school that pays people to be positive reinforcement specialists – these folks literally walk around the school, making themselves available to anyone who needs to be told everything is okay, and that they’re good people. (They can’t hug, or shake hands, by the way).
Another Jimmy I knew had a much different safe place. Indeed, his wasn’t very safe at all, but somehow he survived.
That Jimmy – it’s his real name, and he was my uncle on my dad’s side – was also known as “Gunner Jimmy” by some of his comrades. At the age of 18, he was a machine gunner on a B-25 bomber in World War II. He fired the dorsal (top) and belly guns on early Mitchell bombers, and later, was a tailgunner. Despite the fact that he was the natural target for German and Italian planes trying to destroy the bomber, Uncle Jimmy liked the C/D model Mitchell with the tail position because – you guess it – the armor made it a “safer place.”
Not safe – but safer.
He had a part to play in his own safety, not just in defending the aircraft and his crew, but in defending our nation and the world from the Nazis.
He didn’t have people to reassure him and welcome him to group therapy because his father was a hard man to work for and his mom spoke sharply to him once on a birthday. Jimmy had a pair of .50 caliber machine guns, and the knowledge that his life wasn’t as important as those in the other end of the aircraft, not to mention the people back home, but he still had a job to do, even if no one ever gave him a participation trophy.
Jimmy had no one to help him work through the fact that each and every mission was not as important as someone else’s mission. His response to the fact that some people (namely the enemy) really didn’t like him was not to protest and file a civil rights lawsuit, but to grow up, get over it, and if necessary, fight back.
He saw life that way, too – Uncle Jimmy was always fair, and he always worked hard. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t better or worse than anyone else. He was always friendly, and willing to help others. He lived a long, healthy life, saw his kids grow up, and died in his sleep.
Uncle Jimmy knew the world wasn’t all about him.
I know there are young people out there who will sneer as readily as I do at the concept of a state-supported safe place, like my buddy’s daughter Amber. I had lunch with Amber and her dad Peter the other day, after she graduated Early College.
She has a plan for her life, and doesn’t think the world owes her a thing except a chance. She has a family, a fiancé, an education that isn’t finished yet, manners, drive and a sense of humor.
She doesn’t need a safe place.
As far as I’m concerned, we need more Ambers and fewer Little Jimmies in this world.
If you don’t like that – well, I’m sorry. Go hide in your safe place.
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