Unfortunate

So my niece is a really cool little person.

Smarter than she has any right to be.

Anyway, my sister and her husband are currently living in the area where I grew up, and consequently my niece is going to the same schools I went to as a kid.

We were hoping that the area had improved.

It's starting to look very much like it has not...


Granted, to my knowledge, no teacher has intentionally kept her in her desk for multiple class periods in order to force her to wet herself... yet... but they do seem dead set on turning a blind eye to the older kids bullying her.

Now I know it's a part of growing up.

And I know she'll have to get use to it.

And I am a big proponent of letting kids toughen up a bit.

But these little shits are 8-10 years older than she is.


And really, six seems a little young to be hearing every racial epithet in the book.

If it were just kids her age I'd teach her how to knock their little peckers in the peat  (and encourage her to do so)  But with kids that much older there isn't much she can do.

My sister has already talked to the teacher, and all it's done is all that it ever does (earn my niece a reputation as a crybaby.  Which is hilarious considering that the kid has survived more injury, bullshit and horror than most of the teachers in that place).

Ah, but she's not from one of the 'ruling' families in the area.
She's not a little blonde haired, blue eyed, princess.
She's not a perfect little church going angel.

And for some folks that's enough of a reason to be a dick.

For some folks that's enough to justify little cruelty (petty or not)

Some folks will say it's her own fault for having been born in another country.

Some folks will say that the kid would be better off if she knew her place.

Some folks will say 'it's to be expected in a conservative area'

Some folks have no idea how glad they should be that I am who I am today and not who I was, say, fifteen or twenty years ago.

Hope she doesn't get too disheartened. 

Because she really is a neat little person.

And I don't want her to lose that just because she's stuck maneuvering the gentrified, yuppie infested ghost of the redneck tweeker shithole I grew up in.


Can't wait till we get my fathers place sold so we can turn our backs on that dump of a county for good...

Some folks don't know just how charmed their lives are.