Tangents & The Times

We recently got cable,
which was a huge deal.
I haven’t had cable
in five years.

Accordingly, Dudefriend started watching CNN in the morning, which at first, I thought was a good idea. You know, keep up with current events, maybe catch some stupid shit Mitt Romney said, watch Bill Nye talk about global warming.

But after this morning,
I think CNN is a piece of shit.

The first reason,
is because they had a headline that read,
“Where was God in Aurora?”

I’m not even going to bother going in to that because if you think that is an appropriate question to be on what is supposed to be an objective news source (HA), then you are a part of the problem & I don’t have time to deal with you right now.

What really has me going though,
is this free plastic surgery for bullied kids bullshit.

This morning they ran a story on a perfectly normal looking preteen girl. By “perfectly normal looking”, I mean she looked like an average kinda gawky middle schooler, just like everyone else looks at that age. She wasn’t ugly, she just hadn’t grown into her ears. She was going to look just fine by the time she got through puberty.

But since the first grade, she was made fun of for her ears & subsequently, she is now a shy person & feels her ears are ruining her life & she convinced her dumb fucking parents to let her get free plastic surgery to get them pinned back.

Only once she got her ears pinned,
the surgeon savior realized,
she also would need
her nose & her chin done.

Because pinning her ears back would make her slightly angled nose & chin more prominent & then she would assumedly be made fun of for that.

So, now this girl any of us could have gone to junior high with, has a completely new face. This perfectly normal adolescent now has what she considers a perfect face.

The problem I have with this
is that I was exactly like this girl,
except instead of huge ears, I had a huge nose.

I was made fun of mercilessly for my nose from first grade until now, since most YouTube commenters are still fourteen apparently. I hated my nose & felt it was ruining my life. Kids at school called me “Rat Face”, which was eventually abbreviated to “Rat”. In junior high, boys would talk to me with their palm on their forehead, making this huge, 90 degree angle in front of their face to demonstrate what it was like talking to me. It was humiliating & I dreamed of the day I could get a nose job because when I told my parents I was being made fun of for my nose & that I wanted a nose job, they told me FUCK NO.

And I’m so glad they did
AND YES I’M GOING TO TELL YOU WHY!

Being bullied made me a stronger person. It was horrible in the thick of it, but now I am a awesome individual because of it. It built character & a thick skin, two very valuable assets outside the confines of math class that no surgeon can cut, inject or sculpt out of you. That’s the real shit right there. That’s life. That makes you who the fuck you are.

For me, I built up two defense mechanisms during those years of being bullied. I lived by the belief that if I made fun of myself before anyone else could, I could control the joke. Instead of being laughed at, I was laughing with them. The second defense mechanism was being a sarcastic little bitch. If I hadn’t had to develop those skills at an early age, I would not be the snide, self-deprecating piece of shit blogger you see here today.

And to be honest,
I really like my nose now!

I had to grow into it, and it’s not perfect, but I think it compliments me & my personality quite well.

Had my parents been like,
“OF COURSE WE’LL GET YOU A NOSE JOB
FOR 8TH GRADE GRADUATION, SWEETHEART!”
who knows what I’d look like or who I’d be today.

Being bullied isn’t new.
And yes, I realize the internet makes it worse.
BUT I TOO HAD THE INTERNET. AND DON’T THINK FOR A SECOND I DIDN’T GET HARASSED ON THE INTERNET BECAUSE I DID. AND IT WAS MEAN. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU PICK YOURSELF UP BY YOUR AIM MESSENGER NAME & YOU GO START A BLOG OR SOME SHIT & WHINE ABOUT IT & LISTEN TO EMO MUSIC JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.

I find this plastic surgery for bullied kids deeply disconcerting as it deprives them the chance to be the person they were born to be.

But, then again,
maybe not everyone is so strong.
Maybe I just have dope-personality genes.
Maybe plastic surgery will stop the bullying
& subsequently stop some psycho from shooting up a school.

I guess there’s arguments both ways.

My final stance is that
I hope my kids grow up fucking ugly so they turn out to be fucking kick-ass adults. No one great as an adult was the cute kid in grade school. It’s always us losers with big ears or four eyes or extra long extremities that go on to kill it because if you’re a cute kid, everything goes your way & you never have to work for shit & you don’t have to develop kindness or a sense of humor or a big brain to have friends or enjoyment. You’re just cute & everyone likes you & you grow up & go to college & get fat & I get to laugh at you on Facebook because despite all the cool, admirable qualities I got out of being made fun of,
I am also a spiteful, petty asshole.