I was driving today and saw this kid from my brothers grade in another car. For some reason I remember back when I was in 9th or 10th grade once while I was waiting for my dad to come pick me up after track practice. He was there with a few people on the basketball team (middle school team, 2 years younger than me), and I was sitting by myself just minding my business. There was a janitor's broom next to them, the ones with the long heads that screw off. One of the other guys suggests, or more like commands, him to take the broom head and shake the dirt from it all over me. He starts walking over with it, a bit timidly, apologizes a few times and then starts to do it. He sort of said sorry the whole way through over and over, and a few times I said "well then stop/don't do it" but he kept going for a while. I may have grabbed at the broom head a few times, but I never tried to run or fight him off, it was just dirt.
I remember the tone of the sorry's fairly well, they stood out. He wasn't just a mean malicious person, young innocent kid. The pressures to fit in be accepted makes being a kid, or a human in general, hard. He wasn't beating himself and crying over doing something bad, his sorry's weren't like someone who is forced to do something that they don't want to do. It was more of a "i shouldn't do this, but I want the benefits."
Is that how we become who we are?
