The whispers came to me early in the morning. One of our classmates had been to his house the day before and was telling people about it. We were in third or fourth grade, maybe fifth, and my memory has been fading of late, but this one remains, embedded and part of what formed the base-rock of my outlook on life.
“His dining room table is a wooden picnic table,†the friend whispered conspiratorially to me. I acted aghast. ‘How poor did you have to be to have a picnic table as your dining table?’ was the sentiment I sensed was expected of me, and I easily slipped into the role, even if I couldn’t have told you what kind of dining table we had in our own house – I only knew it wasn’t a picnic table, and more importantly I immediately understood that having a picnic table was something to be ridiculed. From a very young age, I knew how to recognize the temperature of a room, or a conversation, or a look. I could tell where the popular stance stood, when I could get away with challenging it, and most importantly when it could not be safely challenged without cost to my own image. This was the essence of how to be popular and well-liked, and more importantly how to stay so.
On that particular day, when the whispers came to me, I knew the role to play, and as long as I didn’t have a picnic table in the dining room I was safe to go along with the judgment and derision. I also knew that as the son of a doctor and nursing professor, my family was comfortably middle class, and more fortunate than many others. I never felt that gave me any entitlement, but I saw the effect that fact had on others. It would be a lie to pretend it didn’t rub off on me, that I didn’t take in those perks of privilege and parade through life in a more-peacock-like manner because of that emboldening baseline.
To my regret, I went along with the ridicule that morning, as much as I felt bad about it. Class and financial status were already eating into the innocence of school-children, and we were never as innocent as people made us out to be in the first place. There was more shame in judging that classmate and his family than there would ever be in having a picnic table. I learned that lesson early, in the way it made me feel instantly icky, and from then on I did my best to never join in the ridicule about anyone having less than me.
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