Prompt #8 is to write about something that happened to me this month.
Someone I know threatened to rip my head off. I don't think she meant it. She was giggling at the time.
It was my four-year-old niece Sarah. She said she'd rip my head off and have an Uncle Tim sandwich. I'm not sure she knew why what she said was funny, except that it made grown-ups like me and her dad laugh.
We were fooling around at my daughter Emily's dance recital. She was climbing all over her dad, and making faces at me. I looked surprised and jumped. She giggled. After a few rounds of that, she said she was going to rip my head off and have an Uncle Tim sandwich. We all giggled quite a bit more.
Her parents think she learned the phrase from some kids at pre-school, probably boys who were pretending that they were professional wrestlers or something. I'd be willing to bet money that the boys didn't really mean they were going to hurt someone. The threat is too ludicrous, the phrasing too funny. They were three or four. Yes, four-year-olds can be bullies, so maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
I have a friend who has God's calling to teach teenage kids who have troubles. Teenagers who could soon be in jail. Teenagers who might say they were going to rip her head off and mean just that.
I think there's a difference Sarah and those teenagers. I think anybody with half a brain would know that there's a difference between those kids.
And yet, we make "zero tolerance" rules as if we can't trust anyone to tell the difference.
Maybe we can trust more and fear less. In other words, maybe we should all do less shouting and more giggling.
Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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