To Speaking Out

We preach it to our kids: if you see someone getting hurt or bullied, say something. Tell an adult. Speak up. Speak up for someone who can’t speak up. Do the right thing.

We know they don’t. We know they see it every day: the shove on the bus, one kid gets called “fag” in the hallway. No one sits with that kid at lunch. Her jeans don’t fit her right and she wears her ponytail just a little too far to one side. Be the nice kid, we say. Be a friend, make a friend.

Credit: Dreamstime

I see it every day, too. I tell myself I’m picking my battles, that adults are different, that our choices and behaviors are not like the children. I weigh it against upsetting a colleague, against my job, against what I think my reputation is.

But sometimes, I am just stunned.

I’m working with a woman and some volunteers on a church project. The woman turns to me, concerned. Our volunteers are all Black and we have offered them the leftover snacks to take home. She suggests I walk out with them, so no one thinks they are stealing. She whispers this to me.

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I feel broken. Stupid. Angry. Small. I cannot even think of what to say; I brush it off, “Oh, it’s just the snacks. It’s ok.” To speak up, I would have to have words. I would have to, in that split second, be able to frame it. I feel 12, in the lunch room, the loner is sitting alone and I know it’s wrong. The tensions hold us all on the surface, waiting for one small move.

To The Little Red Pocket Calendar I Buy at Walgreen’s Every Year

I try every year to resist, to use the technology I already have: my computer, my phone, but they just don’t work.

You lay it all out. One week per open page. Saturday and Sunday fitting into one square. Lined boxes so I can write “Dentist” on a Tuesday, “English Meeting” on Wed.

The beauty of you is that I can open up to any week and see it: Monday is at the top of the page, Thurs day at the top of the next page. No other week except the one I am looking at. This is as fast as I want to live my life.

The others give me more than I want to know. And they list it. And I have to sync them all. And if I am on the phone with the doctor’s office, I have to pull the phone away and use the speaker to get to the calendar because she might say any day in the next 4 months. I hate speaker. You, I simply have on the desk. I thumb through. Thursday the 27th? Yes, that will work.

And on December 31, I file you away. Another year completed. One more down. Maybe this year I will go paperless.

No, no I won’t.

To the Russians Who Follow This Blog

It appears there are about 5 of you who, on any given day, read these letters. I have readers in other countries, too, but I have some idea who they might be or how they might have discovered my blog. Those are kind of a Kevin Bacon, six degrees thing. If you’re not sure what that is, google it. We measure our connections to each other in the world by Bacon.

St. Basil's, Moscow

But Russia? I have no ties, nor ties to ties, that I know of, so I have a lot of questions. How did you find this? Many of our workplaces have strict policies about using the computers at work and the Internet for personal, and I wonder if you broke the policy, bored one day at lunch and after following a few links, found this. Do you have to worry your boss will find out? Do you have to erase all the cookies and history before you leave for the day? Do you all know each other, sit next to each other, complain about your workday the way I used to when I worked in an office? Do you email links or just crowd around one computer and read out loud?

Second, are you Russians or American ex-pats? Are you looking for glimpses of a country you’ve never been to or a country you left behind? Do these letters shed light on who we are and remind you either why you stay there or why you left here? Does it make you miss a home you never had or one you did? Or do you just feel relieved?

Finally, where in Russia are you? Moscow? St. Petersburg? One of the big cities all of us in the US have heard of? Like the way you know New York and Los Angeles? Maybe Dallas?

Coat of Arms for the City of Nalchik

Or are you in Nalchik? It's about the size of Akron. Horseshoe shaped around mountains. Are you professors or students at the local university? Do you teach writing? Do you wonder what happened to the attention spans of the kids? Do you like their music? Do you go home, like I have done, to the Dostoevsky or the Chekhov on your bookshelves? Do you wonder what you will write today? If there is anything left in this world to say?