Real Life

The philosopher Plato had this theory of reality.  It’s called the Allegory of the Cave and has always fascinated me.  I’ve always enjoyed Plato’s writings.  They are more accessible than some other philosopher’s.  The Allegory of the Cave goes something like this.  Reality is compared to someone tied to a chair inside a cave.  They face the back of the cave.  Behind this prisoner a fire projects shadows onto the wall in front of them.  These shadows are created by whatever passes in front of the fire.  Reality to the prisoner is only shadows on the wall of a cave.  So if someone were to come in from outside the cave and talk about colors, sunlight, nighttime… whatever, it would be completely foreign.  In fact, it would seem like a lie.  If the prisoner was allowed to leave the cave…their whole perspective would change.  They would be blinded by sunlight.

Plato believed the philosopher’s job was to illuminate reality to the world.  The philosopher explains the shadows we see.  I’m no philosopher.  I’m just a high school teacher trying to explain stuff to my students every now and again and hoping they get something from what I say.  Sometimes I stand in front of my classes and think of myself as an Illuminator – someone turning their chair toward the mouth of the cave.  Just a little.  A way of gently showing my students something new, something curious, something they may have not known or thought about before.  Helping them to see my own version of reality.  Helping them see a different part of the world.  So it was the other day with the girl I'll call Larinda.

Larinda is a pretty girl.  She is a flirt.  She is always on someone’s arm.  She is tall, and looks like a woman ten years her age and has big, dark eyes.  She’s not really womanly – she’s beyond that – she’s motherly.  Her body looks years older than she really is.  She has a great smile and an infectious laugh.  She tends to wear clothes a bit too tight and a bit too revealing.  Sometimes we have to get her a t-shirt to wear over the top she chose for the day.  Too much cleavage.  She looks like someone in college and talks like a teenager.  Larinda has three children.  She is 17.

Larinda is an interesting girl.  She is loud.  She is talkative and loves attention.  Any kind of attention will do.  If people aren’t laughing at her jokes, she turns to aggression and threats.  If people don’t respond to either, she turns to sex.  Anything to get her peers to watch her, laugh at her, confront her, or scream at her.  Sometimes making noise drowns out the reality going on in her life.  She shows up to class late and makes a big entrance.  She always needs to go to the office for something.  Drama follows Larinda like a puppy.  Drama loves Larinda because she gives it life.  Larinda is rarely quiet.

Until the other day.  We were talking about cultures and sub-cultures.  How each culture has its own set of values, beliefs and customs, its own objects used by that culture.  How each of us is a member of several sub-cultures.  We talked about several sub-cultures and their practices.  In my classroom, it isn’t uncommon to discuss drugs and in this case the class identified strongly with the drug sub-culture – its practices, beliefs and objects.  They got it.  Larinda sat there quietly.  She didn’t ask any questions.  Her head wasn’t down on the desk so I knew she was awake and feeling well.  She just wasn’t her overly exuberant self.  She wasn’t making any noise.

Then she raised her hand!  I, stunned, called on her.  “Could someone be in a sub-culture and not know there were other cultures out there?”  Larinda asked.

I was a bit taken back by the question.  It would be odd.  You would have to be very sheltered to think there was nothing outside your own experience.  But I nodded.  “Yes.”  I said, “I think someone could believe that everyone lived like they lived.”

Larinda nodded thoughtfully.  Thinking.  She bit her lip.  “I think that happened to me.”

The class was uncharacteristically quiet.  Everyone was listening.  I tried to think what might have happened to her.  I tried to quickly go through all the options in my head so I could respond appropriately.  Larinda brushed her dark hair back from her face.  “Do you want to tell us about it?”  I asked, wondering what was coming.

She nodded and said, “I thought everyone did drugs.  You know?  Like, everyone.”

I didn’t know.  I couldn’t imagine someone being so wrapped up in drugs that they thought everyone did them.

“My whole family did drugs when I was growing up.  Everyone coming to the house did drugs.  All my parents’ friends did drugs.  Every house we visited did drugs.  Everyone did drugs.  I didn’t know there were people who didn’t do them.  I was really embarrassed the first time I asked a friend about their drugs and they didn’t have any.  Embarrassed and confused.  You know?  Like, how could they NOT have drugs, right?  It was weird.  Can that happen?  I mean, is that what you’re talking about?”

I was stunned.  How could someone grow up in an environment like that?  I nodded my head.  I reeled from this information.  Not just personal information from Larinda but general education about a whole group of people like Larinda.  There were people out there, children, thinking everyone did drugs.  The world was a drug using world.  It was normal.  Drugs were part of everyone’s culture.  I guess both Larinda and I were naïve.  Neither of us realized that the world was bigger than we had imagined it.  “Yeah.”  I said.  “Wow.  Yeah.  Good example!  I mean… wow.”  I was still figuring out how to bring it all around.  I was working through my own personal shock while trying to keep thinking like a teacher.  “Larinda, good thinking!  You are absolutely right.  Cultures can sometimes be so overwhelming that we believe everyone lives like us.  It’s interesting that you should ask that question.  It reminds me of… “

I brought the lesson back around.  Using Larinda and her experiences for the rest of the period.  The class was quiet and so was Larinda.  A rare thing and we all enjoyed it.

Since then, I look at Larinda in a different way.  I tried to imagine myself in her place.  Tried to think what it would be like to emerge into a world that wasn’t like yours.  Where people didn’t use drugs on a daily basis to get by.  Where parents didn’t do drugs with their own children as a bonding experience.  Where allowing someone to use your body wasn’t the norm.  Where having a child before you were 15 years old wasn’t what everyone did.  Where all of this was looked down on.  A world that disapproves of everything you were ever raised to believe was real, and right, and good.   Imagine what it would do to your self-esteem to come out into a world where every choice you had ever made turned out to be wrong.  Not just wrong, but immoral.  Not just immoral but irresponsible.  Imagine what that would do to a person.

Yesterday Larinda was quiet again.  Not just in my class but in the hallway too.  I saw her sitting alone.  Pretty shoes and skirt poking out from the blanket wrapped around her shoulders.  She was looking out into space with glistening eyes.  She didn’t notice me approaching her.  “Hey.”  I said, gently bumping her shoulder with my fist.  “You okay?”

She shook her head.  “Not really.”  Her eyes growing wide in the way girls do to keep tears from coming out again.  Glancing up slightly to make the tears defy gravity.  Trying to keep eye makeup in place.

“You wanna tell me about it?”  I said, sitting down next to her.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked out the window, drawing the children’s blanket tighter against her shoulders.  The sky was cloudy and the wind blew cold.  It had been warm for the past few days but the weather was changing.  She shrugged her shoulders again, softer this time.  “I just gave up all my parental rights.”  She said, swallowing, and turned her face back towards me.  She looked at me with defiance.  Daring me to have a solution.  Her high heels tapped nervously on the linoleum.

The floor fell out from beneath me.  What do I say to that?  How do I respond?  How do I tell her that I think the decision is for the best?  I think those kids will probably have a better life with another family.  I think SHE will have a better life.  I think Larinda needs a chance to start again.  Find herself.  I think she needs to finish high school.  I think she needs to find some real stability.  But damn!  I don’t care what your situation is; no one wants to have their children taken away.

A lot of kids at my school have children.  Many girls here have children at the daycare downstairs.  They are trying to get their lives together.  Trying to be a good parent and a good high school student at the same time.  In many cases, they are trying without the support of their families, gangs, or neighborhood.  They are doing it in foster and proctor homes where they aren’t normally treated like members of the family.  They’re just untrustworthy guests.  Some are locked in their rooms at night.  Some aren’t allowed to go on vacation with the families who keep them.  For some of them, the only people who really, truly care for them are their own children.  For Larinda, the only people who ever unconditionally loved her have been taken from her by a stranger in a black robe because she is unfit to raise them.  She has been labeled unfit by a world she never knew existed.  She is being judged by standards that didn’t exist for her a year ago.

I finally gathered myself and looked her in the eyes.  “I’m sorry.”  I whispered.  Wishing, not for the first time, that I worked in a school where girls cried about loosing their best lip gloss – or on really bad days, their best friend.  “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”  I managed to say.  I knew most adults in Larinda’s life had failed her and she had an extremely short attention span for kindness.  So all the love and compassion I wanted to show her would be seen as muckish cutesyness.  No matter how sincere I was, she would probably see it as a false front.  So I mustered all my mental and emotional facilities and said, “I’m here for you if you need to talk.”  I bumped her shoulder with my shoulder because that’s what passes for a fatherly hug in the public school system.

I got up and walked down the hall away from Larinda and she turned back toward the window, watching the blustery wind whip the trees into a frenzy.  And I, not for the first time, was glad I didn’t work in a school where girls cried over lip gloss.  But I really wished I could talk like teachers do on television or movies or in novels.  Where teachers know exactly what to say.  Where each and every day ended happily and with catchy theme music.

I’m not saying Larinda is right and society as a whole is wrong.  What happened yesterday is for the good.  I’m not saying Larinda doesn’t have some responsibility for her action.  I think she does.  I am saying sometimes we see things through our own lenses and expect everyone to see through them as well.  We don’t understand that our worldview is not the same worldview shared by everyone.  We need to remember that some of us have been out of the cave for longer than others.  We understand reality, our own reality, better than others might.  But we need to be patient with them.  We need to understand that our world is not the world of others. 

I try to imagine what it would be like to be Larinda.  I try and imagine what it would be like to have only a couple of people who love me, truly love me, and then have them taken from me because I was unfit.  I try and imagine thinking and believing that the entire world used drugs, just like me.  That everyone lived like my parents raised me.  I try and have empathy.  Sympathy.  We see ourselves as liberators to these kids.  They have been freed from their drug using parents.  They have been freed from their gang-banging friends.  They have been freed from the shackles of harmful environments where they couldn’t see the real world.  I believe all that.  I do.  I believe that ultimately all this is in her best interest.  I hope in my deepest heart that Larinda makes it in this world.  In my world.  I hope that she learns to enjoy her new freedom.  I hope she learns to cope and live and even thrive.  She has been set free of her bonds.  She has come out of the cave to see the world as it really is.  She is free to wander this new world.  But the sunlight, at least for today, is blinding her.