I don't know if this story is even worth telling. It happened a while ago—sometime between 2000 and 2003—so there are considerable holes (I couldn't even remember the antagonist's name until the eleventh hour of writing this blog post, and had to go back and edit everything). Originally, I was going to present it as a tale that "had no winners," and maybe that's true, but it's definitely nothing like a morality puzzle; the more I think about it, the more I am coming to the conclusion that the adult in this tale was in the wrong, even though maybe I didn't address it in the appropriate manner.
In any case, this story bubbled up to the surface of my subconscious the other day, so I figured I could kill some time and share it with ya, if for no other reason that to talk about something today besides movies or music, neither subjects that I have as firm a grip on as my own personally history and psyche.
Alright, we set the scene. I am in the upper grades of Catholic elementary school, so after fifth grade, but before eighth. If I had to guess, I was in sixth grade. "Lunchtime" involved two separated periods of time—inside for food, and outside for recreation. The order would occasionally switch, depending on scheduling, but suffice it to say that, for at least a half hour per day, we'd be outside, playing games and goofing off, under the supervision of volunteer parents.
The collective of volunteers was a mixed bag. Some stay-at-home moms, and some retiree relatives. Some incredibly strict, and some just happy to be in the presence of mostly behaved kids. I can't remembering disliking even more than a handful of the "lunchmoms." Even the strict ones were perversely endearing (the infamous miltary-esque Ms. Peg and her end-of-football-game motto of "THAT BALL IS DEAD!" for instance). There was an exception, of course. Isn't there always?
Mr. Griffin was the exception, if only for a brief period of time. Maybe less than a year. A quick sidenote: Yes, I'm using his last name in this. I haven't seen him since graduation, and I have no idea where he is today, or if he is even alive. If I had to guess, I'd say that he is probably holed up somewhere in like Warrington, PA, still stewing over the fact the trump had the election stolen from him. But that's just conjecture. I have no clue.
But so, due to circumstances that we weren't privy to, Mr. Griffin became a lunch monitor during that year. And he was kind of an asshole! I can't remember any of the specifics that led us to believe that he was an asshole, but I have a weird faith in my and my friends' sixth-grade ability to sniff that kind of thing out (being assholes ourselves). I think it amounted to slightly bullying behavior? Nothing obscene, but possibly also not the way you should be talking to elementary school kids as a grown-ass adult?
Oops, I also maybe missed the appropriate opportunity to talk about something integral to this story—that being the fact that I had impeccable style as a sixth-grader. I kid, I kid. I had no idea how to look "cool," and very often did not. The example relevant to this story (not many relevant examples of my "style" in elementary school anyway, since we wore uniforms) is that I thought it was REALLY cool to wear this navy blue Adidas visor. I wore it a lot. Enough to bring it out to recess every day and wear it during the only time of the day I was allowed to? I dunno, I can't find any good pictures from around this time, but just picture it: 13-year-old Joe K*** in a visor during lunch.
Mr. Griffin was supervising us during one otherwise nondescript recess period. I remember we were playing a game in which two lines of students would race back and forth in some kind of pattern, with the adult—Mr. Griffin today—standing at the point where you would turn around and run back to the line. I don't remember the rules (sorry, there's a lot I don't remember, I warned you!).
I must've said something snarky to Mr. Griffin when I was stopping and pivoting near him, because he responded with something that definitely shouldn't have been said, and certainly not within earshot of every other kid in my class. I don't even remember his exact words, but it was something like: "Yeah, and you look pretty gay with that visor on." Or no, maybe he explicitly referred to the visor itself as "gay"? I don't even know if the exact wording is important. Just know that he absolutely used the word "gay," and he absolutely used it as a slur, and he said this as a volunteer at a Catholic school in earshot of at least 30 sixth graders.
Now, the reaction from us students wasn't necessarily a dark one, or shocked, or anything like that. I'm sorry to report that using the word "gay" to describe something in the negative, as an insult, was not particularly uncommon. I'm not saying that I used the phrase all the time personally, but I'm also not saying that sixth-grade Joe never used it a single time. So it's with a measured amount of shame that I say that we didn't take the derogatory phrasing too seriously, at the time.
But because we already mostly didn't like this guy, I acted like he had landed an unfair punch anyway. Mostly joking around, I spent the rest of the lunchtime saying incredulously: "Yo! Can you believe Mr. Griffin called my visor gay?!" As a sixth grader, I didn't understand that he had crossed a line. I knew nothing of power dynamics. If anything, I was trying to use the occurrence as leverage to prove our overarching point that Mr. Griffin was a dick. Here was evidence! But at most, it was schoolyard bullshitting. I didn't understand that Mr. Griffin should not have said what he said, for multiple reasons.
On the way back from recess, still yapping about how Mr. Griffin "disrespected" me, I eventually told a teacher. I guess it was technically "tattling." It feels weird even having to explain, because as an adult myself currently, I know that telling a teacher about it was absolutely the right thing to do in that moment. But I call it "tattling" because, again, I didn't understand the adult perspective at the time. I really was just fucking around, acting like I was insulted because it was Mr. Griffin, the guy we didn't like. If that makes sense. Moot point, so I won't harp on it.
So I told a teacher—I don't remember who exactly, but if this is sixth grade, then it must've been Ms. McHugh—and even though I can't remember which teacher's face it was, I remember specifically that that face's eyes bulged out of their skull when I told her. Next thing I know, I'm being called to the principal's office.
It was a small school, so I knew the principal, and she knew me. In terms of like "student leadership" or whatever, I was a medium-sized fish in a very small pond, so this wasn't even one of my first fifty one-on-one interactions with the principal, so it wasn't anxiety-driven or anything. But I still knew what it was about, and I guess I maybe even thought I was going to get in trouble for what happened?
But the conversation that followed was probably the most delicate and reserved an authority figure has ever been to me. She first wanted to make sure I was alright, which felt weird because I wasn't actually insulted or upset, I was just fronting to prove a point about Mr. Griffin. Then she said that Mr. Griffin would never supervise my lunch period again, because he shouldn't have said what he said, and she didn't want something like that to happen again.
The decision made me a little uncomfortable, both then and now, for different reasons. At the time, I was patted on the back for "finally getting rid of Mr. Griffin," which, sure, the dude was a tyrant in our eyes, my eyes included, and so it was probably better for all involved if we had limited contact with him from now on. But it's not like I had set out to get the dude in trouble, even if he DEFINITELY deserved it. Getting the fucking principal involved in what I saw at the time as schoolyard rivalry felt like overstepping the line on my end.
But now I'm more uncomfortable for the opposite reason—no, the dude should not have said what he said. Homophobia have no place in the schoolyard, but for an adult to use a homophobic slur against a child seems particularly egregious these days.
And what's more, he was still a lunch monitor! Just because he wasn't with us, doesn't mean he wasn't being an asshole or worse to other kids at the school! I mean, this is exactly what the Catholic Church has always done, with crimes much larger than inappropriate language—if a priest rapes a kid, just move him to a different parish, and hope that nothing happens again. Meanwhile, more kids are being abused. I'm not equating the crime, because I was not abused. I am, however, equating the punishment style, in that there was really no punishment at all, just a sweeping under the rug.
Look, I'm not going to lie, this is definitely all recent retroactive analysis of a previously forgotten childhood memory, possibly brought to the surface by a curriculum rife with discussions of power imbalances and critical queer theory. I had no idea what any of this meant at the time. I just thought the dude was an asshole who got what was coming to him, even if I didn't mean for it to go down that way. Indeed, my final memory involving Mr. Griffin occurred months later, when he was volunteering for the annual Field Day. During the race that he was refereeing, I made sure to take off my visor and hold it up to his face as I passed him. He had no reaction.
Why would he? He got a slap on the wrist for something that neither of us were taking all that seriously at the time. School officials like the principal fronted like they were taking it seriously, but what action was really done, besides the rug-sweeping, and the patting Joe down to make sure he wasn't going to escalate the situation?
At this point, I'm even questioning the intentions of the school in their pushback against the specific term that Mr. Griffin used. No one questioned that it was an inappropriate thing to say, but whereas I see it now as inappropriate because of the ignorant homophobia associated with using "gay" as a derogatory term, it's quite possible that my Catholic elementary school had more of an issue with the term because the Catholic Church has a long history (leading up to this present moment in time) of being anti-LGBTQ. Maybe they were more shocked at a student being accused of being gay than the manner in which the term itself was used. I don't know.
Man, I did not expect to come to this conclusion when I started typing. I kind of just thought at first that this was going to be a tale of one asshole saying an asshole thing. But maybe there is a lesson here. The term is "person-in-environment." When you're considering the actions of any individual, you should also consider the context in which the actions are taking place.
Here was a man who was a strong enough member of a parish as to be allowed to supervise that parish's children during lunchtime. It is that same parish that specifically taught its parishioners that members of the LGBTQ community are sinners who are going to hell. Why wouldn't an adult in that environment use homophobic language? It was particularly brazen because it was directed toward a preteen, but still, it makes sense when you consider the environment in which we were all operating.
Look, I have no pedestal to stand on in this case. I wasn't perfect then, nor am I perfect now. I know I have a lot to learn. It's just wild to me that this much can be learned from examining my own personal elementary school clothing faux pas and adults' reactions to them. It gets more fucked up the more I think about it.
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