Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (105 page)

If Gather had
the common sense and ability to deal with me like a human, things may have
turned out differently. Maybe I would be waking up next to Jackie Anderson
every day, but that would totally suck (right, honey?). Gather went zero
tolerance on my ass and would have probably ended up on Dr. Phil today
defending herself against child abuse allegations.

In the same
manner, a consistent response to note-writing would have helped the evil bitch
to deal with my transgression in a reasonable way.

Whenever I
caught a runt passing notes in my classroom, I would wink and ask him (girls
are so much better at it and rarely get caught) to see me after class. When the
kid’s blood pressure had dropped and his face was no longer bright red, I’d ask
him how it would feel if I posted the note on the bulletin board for all to
read.

Following
through on that threat would make me a hypocrite.

Who Wants Self-Esteem? We All Do!

I remember
thinking the concept was stupid. Not a word you would find socially acceptable
in casual conversation, like “retard.”

***

In the fall of
1982, I led the most glorious under-twelve soccer team in the history of
western Pennsylvania. This was a time of celebration as
Fame
came to
broadcast TV, The Who announced their farewell tour, and soccer moms became
MILFs. The Midnights blew through the competition like the black night sky—at
midnight. We demolished other teams and left coaches scratching the dandruff
from their balding heads. I was the spiritual and physical leader of that club
because I played goalie. You may have heard what a socially equalizing youth
sport soccer is because it fosters a “team.” After all, there is no “I” in
soccer. (No “I” in baseball, football, volleyball, lacrosse, basketball, or
hockey. Fuck tennis.) In youth soccer, everyone follows the socialist model
except for the goalie. Kids can be easily interchanged on the field, allowing
the coach to bury the fattest, slowest kid “on the wing” where he will never
touch the ball, thus preventing any mishap on the defensive side of the field.
Goalie, however, requires a steadfast, brave, but mostly tall kid. A youth
soccer team lives and dies by the quality of its goalie. Some coaches go with
the “goalie by committee” method, as do some offensive coordinators in the NFL,
but it never works. If you have a kid who can almost reach the top of the goal
and is willing to let others kick a frozen rock at his head, you go with that.

I developed into
a goalie because I struggled with other fundamentals of the game, such as
running. Goalies get to stand inside a box for the whole game, never running
more than ten or fifteen yards at a time. I was tall and gangly, the perfect
combination for the position.

As fall crept
towards winter, the Midnights went on a blazing tear of the under-twelve
league. I cannot remember the exact matches and situations (except for the
final game, which is where I am headed with this, so stick with me). We pummeled
opponents and found ourselves atop the heap of the under-twelve youth league.
After dispatching several opponents and angered fathers trying to play
vicariously through their children, we arrived at the title match. I remember
this game fondly even though I was only eleven at the time (this is a big deal
for me as I have a hard time remembering if I brushed my teeth or not today).
The league scheduled the game on Friday, October 30. If you have ever been to
western Pennsylvania, you will know that the weather can be quite cold that
time of year. And it was. The game went back and forth until we finished
regulation with a tie, 1-1 (most likely 5-5 or 7-7, but 1-1 pads my
goals-against average). Because this was the title game, we could not end in a
tie, thereby enacting—the shootout. As goalie, you become paramount in the
strategy and the focal point of the match. Teams would take turns shooting. The
forward or offensive player places the ball on the spot about fifteen yards
away, and the goalie must stand on the goal line until the player kicks the
ball. Most coaches tell their goalies to guess because there is not enough time
to react if you wait to see where the ball is heading.

My
team, the mighty Midnights, went ahead by one as I did not allow a single goal
in the shootout. The other team had only two shots remaining. If I stopped
either one, the game would end with the Midnights as champs. The shooter who
came to the ball was none other than Drew Tanser. Drew’s hair stood on end, and
he routinely spat chunks of what we believed to be furry animals from his
braces. Drew was that kid who would leap from a two-story roof into a baby pool
before anyone would dare him. Drew was the kid who liked to kick you in the
balls in the bathroom for no reason and then leave and tell the teacher you
were picking on him. And he had a rocket shot from a toe of steel.

Drew approached
the ball and stared into my eyes like a wolf over his kill. He took two steps
and planted a solid foot into the ball. I watched the black spots turning over
the white ones as the ball angled to my right and rose towards my head. At this
point, I knew we had won the game. I took a step forward, knocked the ball into
the ground, and sprinted towards my team on the sideline in one motion. I leapt
into the arms of my teammates, and they hoisted me into the air (predating the
flying chest bump by two decades).

The Midnights
win! The Midnights win!

***

At our
end-of-the-year banquet, we gathered around the table in the fire hall, pulled
at the plastic tablecloth, and used Ritchie Greschek for a soccer ball. That’s
what you get for being short.

The coaches
tried to give a victory speech, but nobody was paying attention. We wanted the
trophy, that decadent, goldish-looking guy perched atop faux marble, declaring
us champs. We got that, but we got something else as well. We each received our
own “Midnights” trophy.

I remember
thinking the concept was stupid.

While it might
not be significant to you, this cheap, plastic trophy was my first exposure to
that all-important piece of childhood, Self-Esteem (unless you are Drew Tanser,
in which case, too fucking bad for you). It must be capitalized. The term is so
ingrained within our culture as well as our educational institutions that it’s
now accepted as a force of nature, like gravity or the biker-chick hotness of
Angelina Jolie (circa
Tomb Raider
, not circa African adoptions).

***

The Self-Esteem
movement in American began with the assumption that every child carries a
finely-tuned, sensitive, and delicate device known as Self-Esteem. One must be
careful and cradle the child like in those ninth-grade home economics classes
where the teacher forces you to carry an egg around like a baby until it cracks
to prove how crackable eggs are. Anything can lower Self-Esteem, such as an
unkind word, failure, losing, or getting punched in the face. All of these
occurrences work to erode Self-Esteem, thereby creating a culture of whiny,
depressed, self-loathing adults who will seek to rectify a destroyed childhood
with legal drugs and antidepressants. In
Eating the Dinosaur
, Chuck
Klosterman argues that low Self-Esteem is “a totally meaningless designation,
simply because there’s no extension of human behavior that doesn’t qualify. If
you have no self-confidence, it’s assumed your arrogance is an attempt to
overcompensate for a lack of self-esteem. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person
with the ‘correct’ level of self-esteem.”

This is the
reality that nobody wants to admit today but is not where things stood in 1982.
Many professional educators still work under this assumption. They believe that
a child’s Self-Esteem is completely vulnerable to external forces that work to
chip away at it. They believe that by making every child “feel good” they will
bolster Self-Esteem. This manifests itself in things like a “Person of the
Week” bulletin board, the banning of picking teams at recess, the banning of
dodgeball, and more.

The “Person of
the Week” is an insidious concept where each child gets a moment to shine to
the rest of the community. While I will acknowledge that this type of bulletin
board can work with younger children, it rarely has the desired effect beyond
third grade. As children mature, they look to hold on to common bonds. Through
middle school, they strive to be part of the group, one of the gang. They do
not wish to be singled out on a “Person of the Week” bulletin board. By the
time children enter high school, things change yet again when they become
“private rebels,” wishing no acknowledgement from authority figures and only
implicit recognition from peers that mimic dress, behavior, and slang. For
typical kids, a “Person of the Week” makes them feel special, like everyone
else.
George Carlin proposed an interesting scenario during his final
taped performance on HBO. During a rant on the Self-Esteem movement, he asked a
pointed question.

“What
about every adult? Isn’t every adult special, too? And if not, then at what age
do you go from being special to being NOT so special? And if every adult is
special, then that means we’re all special, and the whole idea
loses all its fucking meaning.”

Like
Dash from
The Incredibles
says when Helen claims that everyone is
special, “ . . . It’s another way of saying no one is.”

***

“ . . . The
child will never lose. We know he’ll never lose, because in today’s America, no
child ever loses! There are no losers anymore. Everyone’s a winner, no matter
what the game, or sport, or competition. Everybody wins. . . .
Everybody gets a trophy. . . . ”

Love
or hate Carlin, the man had his finger on the pulse of American culture. He
realized that kids are very perceptive and that they see through the nonsense.
I know this because they saw through my façade of competency when I arrived to
school with a hangover. They may have not known I had finished pounding Buds
three hours earlier, but they knew it would be a great day to see how many
times they could say my name in one forty-five-minute block of time.

They
know that not every child can win and that in any competition or sporting event,
someone will ultimately lose. It is not an evil ploy to tear at Self-Esteem; it
is the way things are. It does not matter whether you call it “losing” or the
“second winner,” kids know the difference in the same way that Southerners say
things like, “Ya know, Mabel bought one raffle ticket at the church fair and I
spent my entire paycheck on them, and she won,
bless her heart
.” What
they really mean is, “Ya know, Mabel bought one raffle ticket at the church
fair and I spent my entire paycheck on them, and she won,
the fucking bitch
.”
Call it what you want, kids know.

A
technique that has become standard operating procedure in many schools is
“positive reinforcement.” It attempts to build Self-Esteem through the constant
and eternal praise of every aspect of a child’s existence.

“Way
to wipe your ass, Johnny. Good work on that!”

It
seems innocent enough until you recognize that students are being commended on
things they are
supposed
to be doing. It goes without saying that
everyone loves a compliment. Recognition from others is a big motivator in our
behavior. But imagine walking through your day and having your boss compliment
you on the fact that you turned the water off at the sink in the break room, or
recognize how well you dialed your phone, or give you public recognition for
showing up to a staff meeting on time. It might seem wonderful at first,
although a bit odd. If this happened constantly, the compliments and praise
would lose the intended effect. This is what is happening in schools. Children garner
praise and commendations for walking in the halls, using conversational tones,
or doing their homework. If a child usually throws feces while screaming curse
words at others as he stumbles through the school, then it would make sense to
praise him when he does it like a human being. But if students come to expect
praise for doing what they are supposed to do, it loses all value.

***

The Columbine
tragedy reflects the sadness and disconnect of raising children in modern
America, and reference to it must be made with care. It is another example of
the perception of the general public on the role Self-Esteem plays in the
education of children.

On April 20,
1999, two teenagers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High
School in Jefferson County, Colorado, and opened fire on teachers and
classmates alike. They killed twelve students, one teacher, and injured
twenty-one others before committing suicide.

Shortly after
the massacre and for years following it, stories emerged. Dylan and Eric were
loners. Kids routinely picked on them. They listened to music by Marilyn Manson
and Rammstein that provoked their violent behavior. The boys became outcasts,
leading to low Self-Esteem, which ultimately pushed them to the edge.