Bring Me Men

I grew up in a small roughneck town of about 5000 people. I got into my first "fight" (no fists, mostly just yelling) with a boy when I was four. He accused me of not being a girl because my hair was too short. My opinion of boys ever after was that they were dumb and bad at listening.

As I grew older and puberty hit getting mistaken for being boy wasn't an issue, but dealing with them continued to be a pain. I resorted to watching them together - I had more than a few male friends, how hard could this be - and figuring out what MADE them listen. Sometimes that was taking advantage of my early puberty voice and yelling at them like their mothers, using scary grown-up words if I had to. Sometimes it was a swift kick to the shins before the teacher saw. Sometimes, after those steps, it was watching them in the moments when they got quiet and seeing what lay underneath the idiocy.

Because they honestly thought they were stupid.

I was a straight A little hustler, working my ass off to maintain the GPA my parents assumed I was naturally capable of making (natural my fucked up anxious ass) and so to me the idea of "getting" the homework or figuring out things didn't seem like such a big deal. It was just what I did. But as I sat at the table with my assigned seatmates - three of the biggish, brutish, worst behaved boys in class, who decided THAT seat order - and I suddenly went over how to fill in the worksheet I realized they'd all fallen quiet.

"How'd you get that? I didn't get that at all."

Pause. "I just listened to what the teacher said and read the instructions."

"Oh. You're smart."

The unspoken? We're not. It dawned on me in that moment that they literally thought they were less intelligent and incapable of doing the work.

My teacher had failed them.

I immediately went Hermione Granger on this shit.

"Look - you're not stupid. If the teacher could explain this well enough we'd all get it. That's their job. Here, watch - we do this, like they said, but then you add here..." and I quickly broke down the steps, raising my loud little voice up and pumping as much drill sergeant bravado in as I could (never show weakness as a little boy - rule number one).

Over time and looking back I realized things I hadn't noticed as a young kid myself back then. Our teachers weren't the only failures. Those boys came from "factory families" - folks who had spent generations as assembly line labor, which was probably a step up from mining coal. When your entire history is basically being a dumb cog, drinking beer, knocking up your childhood sweetheart, and living in a trailer - why would you imagine anything else? You're asking kids to go above and beyond what they know without giving them any hope for it. And you expect them to believe you?

While I used to resent being the straight A kid, I also had a major leg up because adults treated me differently. I had expectations. And the key thing about expectations is people don't set them when they don't think you're capable of achieving them. These boys had barely any expectations for their behavior. And the underlying message, the one every adult repeated whenever they gave up or didn't bother holding them accountable, responsible, or capable, was I can't.

I've thought myself bossy, angry, hot-tempered, stubborn, or downright bitchy if I'm being honest - but end of the day what I do is I hold my expectations. Do not tell me you're stupid. I know you can figure shit out. Do not tell me you're just a jerk. I've seen you behave better. Do not joke that you're another loser. You only lose when you don't bother to take a shot. And do not expect me to do all the believing in you - grow up and believe in yourself.

I don't know what the male equivalent of Oprah is (Ron Swanson? Honestly the binary is exhausting, I don't even care) but I do know that as a society we need to hold expectations for each other. We need to demand better behavior, not only for our own benefit but because when we tell each other, "I know you can do better," what we're really saying is "I still believe in you - don't let me down."