As society today, we have always viewed people, and then interpreted then into something they probably weren’t, hence, “don’t’ judge a book by its cover.” In time I have discovered the sweetest people are actually putting on an act and are my mortal enemies, my best friend is the person everyone thinks is different, and after all hell breaks loose in one country, the world decides to be racist and ‘confirm’ that all people of that race are terrorists.
I can start off with my friend Liza Laing. In kindergarten, everyone is a friend with everybody, that’s how children are, but once we entered grade one (she wasn’t in my class) no one would talk to her, or hang out with her. She was different. No, nobody was afraid of her, they just didn’t like the way she acted. For me, she was only a classmate until grade 4, when my best friend Becky and I decided to befriend her. Turns out we had much more in common than I thought. Though we were only 9 years old, we felt like we had known each other our whole life. She literally was a genius (and still is). I would hang out with Liza a lot, and we started to make our own comics. No one else was a nerd back then. We were both huge fans of The Beatles, and both loved the movie The Princess Bride.
I can’t help but smile over the times when we were in gym and instead of playing dodge ball, we would be on the stage making a dance to the song “Help!” which our teacher agreed that it was still a good form of exercise. By the time middle school hit, we were flooded with having the perfect image. Liza was (and still is) extremely skinny (she just has an abnormally fast metabolism) and I, the more chubbier one. I was used to being made fun of my size, but I didn’t care, I liked to eat. But Liza, on the other hand, she probably ate way much more food than I, but during lunch hour, I could hear people talking about how “Liza is anorexic,” to which I would always defend her case. Of course no one knew what a metabolism was, so I normally lost.
It was Liza and I until grade 8 where we found certain individuals that were like us. We all managed to get along perfectly. In high school our group always stayed together, until that one day where I remember it was just us two sitting on the field and we were talking about me having depression. She brought up that she was Autistic. I had to take that in. She had always been extremely loud, and could never concentrate on something for too long, but you know, she was still my Liza.
We still look dumb walking down the street, me, larger in size, wearing nice-fitting jackets and tight jeans, and she, abnormally thin but has an amazing figure, wearing extremely baggy clothing (“It’s comfortable,” she always states. I couldn’t agree more). We’re extreme opposite now; She’s obsessed with manga (Japanese comics) and is planning on being a web-designer when she graduate, and I’m the one that reads Shakespeare and loves the performing arts and am planning on taking Fine Arts at university. Though she had always loved music, she was always too scared to join band, because of her fear of people. Well, now that I’ve left her school, she’s decided to take a stab at it. She joined Band. No one knows how proud I am of her.
I personally had always found it hard to trust people, and this is from experience. My experience is of when people who I always though were amazingly nice and sweet and a really good classmate, and then BAM! They stab you in the back. Oh, they were never nice to you, but they weren’t in it to get information out of you to make of you for. No, they just wanted to make fun of you. I was the guinea pig at Spectrum Community School. I’d confronted many people to ask why they are the way they are, and why the do what they do. The only response I ever got was the person’s friends yelling at me until I’d cry. I have one main example person, but I’d rather not say names.
Right now my sister is the same class as one of those now mortal enemies of mine. Liv talks about how Kate* helps her with French and “is a real life saver and reserves more respect then she does, even though she is one of the nicest people I know.” Guess you don’t know many [nice] people, huh, Liv? It hurts to hear her name, and then think about all that was said and done. I get a sick feeling in my stomach and I want to cry. It’s something in my past and I never want to hear it again. But maybe I just judged too fast? Maybe she is nice. But why would she have done that then?
Here we go we’re talking internationally now. Stereotypes. Homophobia. Racism. That’s just a load of baloney. This is the gravest judging there is out there. “You failed that test so you must be dumb,” “you’re fat so no one’s going to ever love you,” “you’re smart so you must be the teacher’s pet,” “You’re skinny so you must be anorexic,” “you’re black so you’re going to rob me,” “you have an abnormally high-pitched voice for a male, so you must be gay,” “you’re Pakistani, so you were part of 9/11 and are a terrorist,” “you only wear black so you must be emo.” The list goes on and on and on. Ever notice that’s it’s normally image-wise that people are being judged? This is staying. It’s never going to stop.
I try to give everybody at least one chance to show who the truly are. I never judge, but I never trust. I need to know the person’s views and characteristics before I’ll tell them anything. No, I’m not being racist or stereotypical. I’m being me. People don’t understand why I’m like this, because they don’t know how I think. They’ve never given me the chance.
*Name has been changed
