When Zane was still really little, before Holden was born, he sustained a black eye. He was sitting with his mother on the floor, and toppled forward, and fell right on the edge of a bowl. It was just a simple accident. A few days later I went to Target and took Zane with me. While checking out, the cashier implied that I had hit my child. I was completely flabbergasted that someone would make the assumption that I had physically abused my child. Certainly abuse happens, and it is horrible that it happens. However, a person making the assumption that a) I would abuse my child, and b) that the child had even been abused, without any knowledge of the situation, or the people involved was, to say the least, on called for. A few months ago I was shopping with the boys, and Holden was having a particularly difficult time, especially at self checkout. He was trying to push buttons, and grab impulse items around the check stand. Zane was doing his best to help out, and get us out of the store before Holden, or myself for that matter, had a melt down. A gentleman walked up to me and said “Well at least you have one well behaved child.” Once again I was completely astonished that someone would make such a comment. I told the gentleman that my other child was autistic, and he immediately backed off. Once again someone had made an assumption about people, and situations which he knew nothing about. I shouldn’t have to justify Holden’s actions to anyone. Nobody should have to justify the actions of their children, because there are always mitigating circumstances. People have all kinds of reasons for being a certain way at any given moment. Because of the way our society works, there might be repercussions for that behavior, despite the possibility of good reasons.
While I was in high school, I toured Canada with our Jazz band. While in a hotel lobby we ran into Bobby McFerrin (The “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” guy). We were all super excited to meet him. He is a huge celebrity in the jazz world, especially at that time. We had seen him perform earlier in the week, and he completely blew us all away. He was very brief with us, and a little stand offish. We all took it in stride, and really didn’t think much of it. Later that week, when we were flying home, we ran into him in the airport. We had the same flight to San Francisco. He approached us this time, and apologized for his being brief in our previous meeting. He explained that he had been very tired, and was not feeling well. He was very humble and sincerely sorry for his behavior, which in all honestly was really not that bad. The point is, you never know what someone is going through at any given moment. Maybe you are catching them at a bad moment, maybe they are dealing with a neurological disability, maybe they received their black eye completely on accident, absent of malice. You just never know.
It would be nice if people gave people the benefit of the doubt, especially if they are people they don’t even know, but it would seem to be the human way to judge people. Emotional Intelligence would tell us that it is our primordial need to categorize something as a threat or not, so as to be able to make the proper reaction to it, i.e. fight or flight. I suppose the fact that it is safer to assume the worst, has made us all a little jaded in our ability to give people the benefit of the doubt. I think having Holden as a child has taught me to be less jaded about people, and made me more open to the possibility that there might be much more to the situation then I can perceive. Maybe we all need to take a page out of Bobby McFerrin’s book, and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”
While I was in high school, I toured Canada with our Jazz band. While in a hotel lobby we ran into Bobby McFerrin (The “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” guy). We were all super excited to meet him. He is a huge celebrity in the jazz world, especially at that time. We had seen him perform earlier in the week, and he completely blew us all away. He was very brief with us, and a little stand offish. We all took it in stride, and really didn’t think much of it. Later that week, when we were flying home, we ran into him in the airport. We had the same flight to San Francisco. He approached us this time, and apologized for his being brief in our previous meeting. He explained that he had been very tired, and was not feeling well. He was very humble and sincerely sorry for his behavior, which in all honestly was really not that bad. The point is, you never know what someone is going through at any given moment. Maybe you are catching them at a bad moment, maybe they are dealing with a neurological disability, maybe they received their black eye completely on accident, absent of malice. You just never know.
It would be nice if people gave people the benefit of the doubt, especially if they are people they don’t even know, but it would seem to be the human way to judge people. Emotional Intelligence would tell us that it is our primordial need to categorize something as a threat or not, so as to be able to make the proper reaction to it, i.e. fight or flight. I suppose the fact that it is safer to assume the worst, has made us all a little jaded in our ability to give people the benefit of the doubt. I think having Holden as a child has taught me to be less jaded about people, and made me more open to the possibility that there might be much more to the situation then I can perceive. Maybe we all need to take a page out of Bobby McFerrin’s book, and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”
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