Say Something

There is a fine line between funny and hurtful. It seems the two are getting so intertwined it is often hard to distinguish between them. When people say something hurtful to or about me I am often hesitant to acknowledge that it affects me at all, because I don’t want to look like a jerk if they were just being funny. It also makes it harder to speak out when other people are being made fun of, because if they were just joking, then, again, you might look like a jerk. I have only recently realized that I am being more of a jerk by not saying anything than I would be if I mistook their humor for degradation. It was not until someone stood up for me that I made this realization. This is that story.

It was nearly seven o’clock on a sticky summer evening- August eleventh to be exact. With the scalding sun still lingering overhead, I stood under the shade of an oak tree at the edge of our high school parking lot. Marching band practice (yes this one time at band camp (: ) was halfway over for the day, and we were picking up our bags to go inside for the remainder of rehearsal. I picked up my baritone, slung my bag over my left shoulder and tilted my head up, forcing the last drops of lukewarm water out of my water bottle. As I drank, my friend (I’ll call him James), who I have known for years, walked past me, gently “punching” my stomach as he passed. I would not even call it a punch, because he was only pretending and he barely touched me. This did not phase me at all; it was what happened next that completely caught me off guard.

A guy who is a few years younger than me (I’ll call him Peter), had been standing nearby and saw this happen. Naturally, thinking he was being funny, he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re gonna kill the baby!” In that moment it felt as if time had stopped, but my brain had started going a million miles an hour. My body was frozen, yet my mind was running a marathon. “What did he mean by that? Should I act like I didn’t just hear what he said? Should I make up some facetious comeback? How do people respond to being called pregnant?” I was so disoriented and confused that I did not know what to do. All my body allowed me to do was turn around, mumble “I think I’m gonna go now,” and walk into the school.

I had previously received some questionably misogynistic remarks from Peter about me being the only female member of our section, but this was the first time it really affected me. He always treated me differently than everyone else and assumed that I was weak, overly sensitive, and inferior. Based off of these previous occurrences, my first thought was that he was implying that my only role in life as a girl is to bear children. Looking back on it, I think it is strange that it did not register until much later that he might have been calling me fat. I still don’t know what his incentive behind this statement was, or how he thought it was okay to say, but I do know that his goal was to be funny and I found nothing humorous in being called pregnant.

After I had turned away, James did something I was not used to people doing, especially not for me. Usually people who are not affected by incidents like this pretend nothing happened. James, however, did the opposite. It was clear that he was as shocked as I was, because with an incredulous tone in his voice, he said, “Hey, Peter, you can’t say stuff like that.” That was all I heard of their conversation before I was too far away, but it was enough. He stood up for me. He didn’t laugh. He knew that I was offended by Peter’s comment. This simple sentence was all I needed to brighten my day. The fact that he cared about me enough to defend me from Peter’s remark, even if it was only a simple, though hurtful, statement, made me so happy.

I don’t know if James knows how much he has impacted me, but this incident made me realize just how little needs to be said in order to change someone’s day, or even life. So, I am pushing myself to care less about being a jerk and instead speak up when I think someone might be hurt, because now I know how good it feels to have someone stand up for me. Maybe I am the only one who ever worried about being a jerk in the first place, because standing up for someone should never be frowned upon. However, if you have held yourself back from speaking up because of fear of judgment as I have, I hope you can think past any kind of judgement and speak out for the sake of someone else. It is truly an act of selflessness.

Related posts:

The book of Psalms holds a special place in the hearts of believers as a collection of prayers and songs that express the full range of human emotions and experiences. Praying with the Psalms is an…

You have made that big decision to study abroad and are enthusiastic about the plans for the future, but there is one small detail that you have ignored: your parents For many students, their parents…

Before my journey as a novice programmer, I used to think that programming will be filled with long hours of writing code. The archetype display of a Silicon Valley programmer in black hoodies…