How Times Have Changed
It is curious to me how times have changed. In the not-so-distant past, when I was an 8th grader, I was part of a mixed family. SpySistah and I lived with our mother, our stepfather, our stepbrother, and our half-sister. These "mine, his, and ours" families can be tricky under the best of circumstances. We did not have the best of circumstances.
SpySistah and I were straight-A students and very involved in school clubs and activities. The stepbrother was constantly in trouble, a poor student, and a general pain in the ass. I still don't like him to this day. But then, I tend to not like people who pull a knife on me and try to push me down the stairs. Whatever.
Just to put "times - they are a changin'" into perspective, here's a little anecdote. When I was in the 8th grade, I was a popular girl. I hung with the "it" crowd and had lots of friends. Many of my friends were boys, though the percentage of my friends boys to girls would become even more dramatically weighted to the boy's side in high school. Well, my stepbrother decided to get a little entrepreneurial.
He started shopping offers from his 6th and 7th grade friends for naked pictures of me coming out of the shower. He made the colossal mistake of mentioning his little future product to some guy friends of mine. (I should tell you that my friends all thought that stepbrother was a skeevy little twerp.) They, in short order, brought to me the tale of my stepbrother taking preorders for pictures of me coming out of the shower.
I was mortified! Appalled! I wanted skeevy stepbrother's head on a silver platter, so I could dance a jig around his severed brain. I wanted revenge.
I thought I would get it too. I mean, this was really reprehensible, right? My mom, though, saw instead the need to calm the waters in her marriage and give the kid a break for once. He was always getting into trouble, but I contended he deserved every minute of it! So, mom didn't do much. My grandmother suggested I give the market what it desired. I thought she was joking. She wasn't. She suggested that I take a naked picture of myself coming out of the shower to school and show it to all of the little perverts. She also suggested, however, that I use one of my baby pictures.
I did it, but as far as revenge goes, it was wholly unsatisfactory. It lacked righteousness. It lacked fury. It was kind of weak. And to this day I wish I had done more to get back at the skeevy little SOB.
However, were these events to take place in a public school today, do you have any idea where it might have gone? Today's similar case would likely end up with some parties being removed to protective custody, other parties being charged with attempted distribution of child pornography, or worse. School boards would have been involved...and it likely would have been splashed all over the Drudge Report.
Makes ya think.
