What Makes You Instantly Dislike Someone?

What makes you instantly dislike someone?

For me, it is when someone mocks another person or says something rude about people with a physical or mental disability. I roll those together as I have seen both occur simultaneously.

I can remember as young as grade school the other students mocking children in “special education” classes. It made me feel angry and powerless. The students doing the mocking may have been “caught” and suffered a consequence, I do not know. I just remember it happening over and over.

In junior high we did not have special education. No need, we were divided in to four sections: A, B, C, and D. “A” kids were the smartest (I was in B as we had transferred into the school district and my mom was afraid I might struggle with math). The C level kids were academically slower than A and B students. D students were the least intelligent. As if puberty were not enough to contend with, we were now differentiated by expected grade performance.

The first semester I got all ‘A’s on my report card and one girl in our class turned over my chair and spit at me. I had stepped outside of my assigned “class.” You were not supposed to do that. She had looked over my shoulder and saw my card, it was not something I wanted to bring attention to. I learned to be more discreet when I got future report cards. Not that I had to many straight A cards after that first time.

I was always interested in how all the kids in “C” and “D” fared when grades came out. Years later I discovered that the only academic difference between the classes was the pace at which the material was covered. If they slowed it down and spent more time, then the students in B, C, and D would get the same education. Except they did not.

High school did not have sections. Those of us in A & B, were on the college track. Many of the C & D students as ninth and tenth graders took the same basic classes (basic science, English, P.E., etc.). Once tenth grade rolled around and we were in more advanced math, science, and English classes, the C & D students enrolled in a local technical school for 11^th and 12^th grade. They learned construction, cosmetology, office administration, and other skilled jobs. I thought they were lucky. I would hear others talk about how sad it was that these students would not go to college and have “great jobs.” They were considered “not as smart.”

My parents would never have allowed us to treat anyone as less than a human being. One did not mock anyone (except a sibling – cause you know they are always fair game). The word “retarded” was bandied about quite a bit in my youth. I hated the word. I still do. Yet, used it to describe people with any type of physical or mental difference from the mainstream. That was the word back then. I will not use it now.

I hope we have all learned by now that diversity makes the world a better place. I hope we have also learned that being 'smarter' does not make anyone 'better' or that we do not have to devalue other people to make ourselves feel better.