100 Things #85 The Impact of Words
Oct. 12th, 2014 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jana_denardo
Authors know how words can have an impact positive or negative. Most people know this. Teenagers know it as instinctively as any predator knows how to run down its prey. Middle school is usually hell's cauldron of words that slice slivers of the soul away. I'm not even surprised much - saddened great, yes but not surprised - that middle school suicides are out of control.
After a mildly disastrous family visit this weekend, it occurred to me that in many ways the villain of the piece doesn't have to be the Hannibal Lector eating a liver with a nice Chianti nor the outrageous violence of Bane. The villain can be quiet, using his words to cut the protagonist into pieces.
While I was mulling over this thought today at the Kroger's, I remembered something that happened a while back in one of my moves. I found a student council petition (you needed X number of names to even get on the ballot). I had done it in my senior year to try and look good because I wanted into a six-year medical school program. Anyhow, I never got far. I only had 2 of the twenty required signatures. I'm sure at the the time I saw it and realized the terrible pain but buried it deep to the point I forgot it. I didn't know why I even kept this ridiculous piece of paper failure but when I was packing I saw it and saw one of the two names on it wasn't a name. It was just a slur. Dirtball. (which by the way they spelled wrong. Idiots). It was like it was 1984 again and I was that unpopular girl all over again.
Still in high school, one of my few friends (i.e. another brainiac ostracized from the pack) had said something smart assed about a football player but in French. Guess he never figured they'd approach another friend who was in French class and ask him to translate. Long story short, the one hurling French insults got his ass kicked but the other young man felt terrible. He hadn't known why the ball player wanted to know but he felt the guilt of those words for a long time.
Like I said, high school is akin to hell for so many of us. I remember "Randy," a sweet young man who got accused of giving a guy a blow job in the parking lot. I have no idea if it was true or not. But this was again the 1980s and we still played games with titles like 'smear the queer.' You can imagine how those few words cut deep. Randy eventually stopped coming to school. I never did learn what happened to him.
Bullies know well how their words hit. Most high school battles aren't of fist and flesh but words dripping into ears like poison. What do the easy targets do? Does your bullied protagonist choose a solitary life because it's easier to live inside her shell where the pain can't get her? Does he sleep with every thing in sight to prove he's desirable? What twist do these words put into their lives.
Sometimes words that hurt are unintentional. We all do it. I'm no more or less guilty than anyone else. Like yesterday when my brother looked at my kitchen table. 'You said you cleaned. I've never SEEN so much food on one table." But...but I bought it for YOU so we could have snacks for your visit and breakfast and I don't have much counter space. I know he didn't mean to but he really hurt my feelings. I don't even want to eat the food now because all I hear are those words echoing. I didn't give him any when he left other than the pop since I don't drink it. I bought all this for HIM.
But let's say that wasn't unintentional. Maybe the villain of the piece is one of those who seek to break someone down and make them whatever it is the person thinks s/he'll get in the end. Are they really clueless about the hurt their words cause? Are they doing it purposefully to manipulate people? Are they even sure any more? I'm breaking you down to build you back up. Yeah, while that might work, it's a cruel way to achieve your ends.
Example back to my brother who I think was more careless with his words than aiming to be a bastard but for the sake of argument, let's make this the theoretical villain of the story. I bought myself an amethyst centerpiece to build a necklace out of at the Bob Evans Farm Festival. This one in fact
His response: Great another piece of clutter. Just what your place needed. I didn't even want to unwrap it for the picture. It will never be the piece of joy it was just five minutes before that. Now, let's say the villain is a controlling husband or an uncaring mother and things like this are a constant, what then?
Another example which I know was more designed to hurt because my father gets that way (I think he's deeply disappointed in his life and had to take over the role of father (to his kid brother) and provider for his mother at 19 when his own abusive father passed). Two items of clothing that I was so excited to have. I bought them for my medical school reunion. They were expensive and exotic and I loved them. Rather than just say they're not to his taste, he called one a rag and the other a clown outfit and did I really want to be seen in them?
Now imagine years of this. Have the words worn your protagonist down to sand? Does s/he snap and kill the verbally abusive villain (Deadly Women anyone?) Does s/he get up and walk out even after years of being together? Does s/he visit their grave and hate themselves for not going to do so? There are so many ways to make the quiet villain work. Or maybe it's the protagonist who is the verbal bully and had finally seen the cost of their words. Has someone left them? Has someone committed suicide, pushed there by those hard hitting digs? There are so many places to go.
Of course there are many other forms of abuse and some go hand in hand with the terrible words, like the lady my brother just told me about who was caught yesterday in the town we went to high school in, not just abusing her daughter with words but making her eat cat litter and lick the inside of a toilet. (I have a few choice words for that myself). But one doesn't have to go that far with their villain. Words alone can be enough to break someone.
Oh and for the curious. Here's 'rags' (doubling as my steampunk tunic)
and clown outfit
And the power of positive words? At the restaurant when we were having dinner two young girls came in dressed to the nines for Homecoming. Mom stopped at their table on the way out to tell them how pretty they looked. They lit up like Christmas.
“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.” — Alice Childress
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no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 06:26 pm (UTC)And other times, the person just doesn't get what I'm saying, and takes it the wrong way. This happens most often at work, with my boss, when I say something, and figure it's understandable, but my boss just doesn't get it. I feel like I should use single syllable words with her, or write things out like I might for a child. Which is the wrong way to think, because she is intelligent, but her thought process is so alien to me, I often have no clue how to reach her.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 07:14 pm (UTC)And I know what you mean.I often have that issue with some students and some will take just about anything as a slight against them and go crying to the dean. It's not really their fault. THe new system props them up 100%. They're not used to failing and the consequences of it.
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Date: 2014-10-12 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 08:11 pm (UTC)Adolescence sucks. Putting a bunch of adolescents having sucky puberties together concentrates the suck. We call that concentrated suck "high school."
I hear you on the verbal sniping from Dad. Your brother needs slapped. I've had nice things "ruined" by critical words, but lately, maybe because I'm becoming old and hard-shelled, I don't let people dissing my style ruin stuff for me. There's something to be said for middle age.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 09:27 pm (UTC)we sure do. Honestly at this point I'm all for teachers doing the teaching remotely.
Yes, You're no stranger to that sniping either. And yes my brother does. It doesn't bother me that much any more either. I was more surprised than anything by my brother
no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 08:56 pm (UTC)In answer to your question, I know I tend to keep to myself cuz I've had too many people turn on me for no reason I can fathom. *sighs* So yeah. XD
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Date: 2014-10-12 09:41 pm (UTC)and I do much the same
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Date: 2014-10-12 10:04 pm (UTC)*nods* Must be why we get on so well. :D
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Date: 2014-10-12 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-12 10:21 pm (UTC)