Just smile and bear it series - Intro to the 'boys will be boys' concept.

You may or may not know that in India you officially start school at 3 years of age. Just like every other child around me, I did as well. In fact, I was excited and would have started school earlier if I were allowed. If you drive by a school early in the morning you can see little kids crying and not wanting to separate from their parents around the entrance of most schools. I, being the weird strange human I am, cried sitting in front of our house gate for not being allowed to go to school yet. Thus, for a child so eager to learn, it was just as great a disappointment to go to school and realize, it was all wrong. The year my formal education began is also the year I was sourly disappointed in our educational system. While there are definitely several stories of this time period that I can tell you, for this series, following is the most important one.

While I was disappointed with the educational system, my teacher was someone very nice and someone I liked very much. However, one day she took a leave of absence for whatever personal reason as we all do at our respective jobs at times. So this day we got a substitute. She conduct the class pretty much like any average substitute teacher does and it was all well and good. I was neither here nor there on how I felt about her. So far she was just a random person I was going to see for a day in my life. Then, came the play time.

Now of course if you are dealing with a bunch of three years old you'll have things like playtime, naptime, and aids to help keep and eye on everyone. And so did our class. During playtime, we all went to the designated play area, that had soft matting on the floor and a whole array of toys to play with. This day I'd chosen to play with building blocks. I generally played alone and didn't care to join other groups of kids playing whatever it was they were playing. But on this day, a boy decided I ought to let him play with me. I didn't want to so I gave him all the blocks but one and moved to a different part of the mat to play by myself. It turned out he didn't want to play with the blocks but with me instead. I didn't want to which lead to him trying to force me to play with him and since most of our communication happened with waving of our hands he accidently ended up poking my eye. Which then lead to me crying, which lead to the teacher coming over to see what happened that got followed by sending me out with the aid to make sure my eye was ok. All normal steps for dealing with such a situation.

When the aid brought me back to class, I went to the teacher and complained about the boy's actions and told her all that had happened. She called him over and checked with him about what had happened. Then she told us shake hands, make nice and go to our seats. Now that, I was not cool with. All I did was say I don't want to play with the boy. It wasn't even a case of not sharing toys because I relinquished them to him already. After all it not right to force a person, not even if the person in question is a 3 year old. He was in the wrong and the least he could do was apologize even if he caused my injury accidently. And when I said all that out loud to the teacher, she asked me apologize instead, for fussing about something so minor. I was so mad. I still remember it so vividly. I also, gratefully was intuit and figured there was no point in pushing the matter because she clearly wasn't going to listen to anything else I would say. Also, I wasn't sure how I would get my point across since I'd already said everything I could have said at the time. So, in an actually huff, I said my apology, shook the boys hand and went back to my seat. 

That day I realized that adults weren't necessarily right, reliable or trustworthy even if other adults who were reliable and trustworthy had put you in their care. This moment was were my theory of how, how much and when to trust a person was formed. It was developed over many years, of course. But this incident was the beginning of it.

On a social note though, this was also a point where this teacher unwittingly had introduced a class full of kids to the 'boys will be boys' concept and also unknowingly even endorsed it. How? What do you think happened after the matter was settled, so to say. Everyone including the teacher and the aid starting talking about it. Due to how it was handled the whisper between kids told me that everyone had formed the idea that I was in the wrong when I was not. The conversation between the teacher and the aid told me that they'd just brushed it off as 'kid will be kids' but really, look at who they made apologize. Only me. They had subconsciously (if not consciously) made the choice of favouring a boy over a girl and introduce us all to gender discrimination when the boy was at fault to begin with. Which was also illustrated by an actual comment she made to the aid as boys are naturally rowdy. That's basically excusing bad behaviour by saying 'boys will be boys'. 

Even as an adult whose taken care of more than enough kids to have tackled such situation when I look back at the incident my view don't change. The only thing I wish I could have done differently is articulated my point to the teacher in a better way. But again, I think I did pretty well for a 3 year old. This incident was also the begging and the lesson that taught me the concept of grin and bare it. Since I can hardly force myself to smile when I don't genuinely feel like smiling, grinning was out of the question. Hence, I simply smile and bare it. At least until I can talk about it in a manner that will actually make one listen, consider and re-evaluate their position on a matter. So as reader, regardless of if you agree or disagree with my point of views, I hope you actually listen, re-evaluate and form your best conclusions on issues of society we all deal with on daily basis.