Grown Up Response

Sometimes it's hard being the grown-up. When I see kids out on the playground screaming at each other, shoving or just being less than pleasant to one another, I wish that I could drop my adult visage for a moment and join in the catharsis. Sometimes. What a pleasure it would be to let go of all that pretense and pop off on those around me. Never mind the eventual consequence. It would be nice to blow out the cobwebs and really tear into someone. And in that wink of an eye when I find myself turning to the dark side, I remember that the consequences of my actions stretch out into infinity. What I do today on the playground lasts lifetimes. It says that, even for an instant, I don't believe in all that cause and effect stuff and we should all be careful not to cross me because any one of us could pop off at any moment.
When I breathe out, however, I remember that I am responsible to the role I have chosen. I do need to modulate my reactions to children and adults alike. I want to keep kids safe. All kids. Even the ones who are choosing to be unpleasant. Really unpleasant. Not beheading one another, but that brings me to the point of disembarkation. I watched Donald Stump stand up in front of a crowd the other day and tell them his response to ISIS: "I would bomb the (expletive) out of them." How presidential. How very, very presidential. Regular readers of this blog may have noticed the distinct lack of expletives in my writing. That is primarily a function of my position as a teacher in my community, and though I am surrounded by language as blue as the sky, I make it a point to rise above it. It's not in keeping with the moral high ground that I have taken on as part of my job. Secondly, it should be pointed out that all that swagger is easy enough to maintain from behind a podium without any real authority or responsibility to the rest of the planet. Go ahead and threaten the terrorists. Then, on your way back to your casino, remember that this is precisely the kind of thing upon which a jihad feeds. But just like the lectures that I periodically unleash on the playground, I don't expect a lot of this wisdom to land. Not when it is so much easier to spout rhetoric.
And finally, the worst part about this kind of bluster is that it is infectious. When the world is running at this level of rhetoric, even otherwise calm voices like Secretary of State John Kerry end up having to ratchet up the testosterone. "Your days are numbered and you will be defeated." If it sounds a little like the braggadocio of a professional wrestler, that's intentional. And unfortunate. True strength is not found in threats. It is found in standing up to those threats.
But that doesn't make much of a bumper sticker, does it?