Papa Has No Tolerance for Mess

I am a kid of the 1970s. The decade of Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, The Flip Wilson Show and Sanford and Son. My heroes were guys who didn’t take no mess – Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Bruce Lee. Men who would not initiate violence, but would elicit extreme mayhem when forced. These guys didn’t talk much, because they didn’t need to. I think this is where the phrase “I WISH someone would mess with me” came from.

While Dawn was in elementary school, she told Lisa and me about two boys who constantly bullied her on the school bus ride home. Dawn said the boys would throw her backpack to the ground, or step on her heels. After hearing of these incidents for about three weeks, I decided to be Dirty Harry/Black Caesar on dem bullies. I took a day off work to meet Dawn at the school bus stop. As the boys Dawn identified got off the bus, I yelled at them. “YOU BOYS THINK IT’S FUNNY TO PUSH SOMEBODY AROUND??!!” I tapped the shoulders of each boy with a finger; one was so frightened that he fell to the ground. The bus driver yelled, “I saw what you did!!” To which I replied, “Then they need to stop messing with my daughter!!”, and walked Dawn across the street to our home.

About two months later, right after Lisa drove Dawn to school, I was preparing to go to work when I heard a loud rapping at the front door. Two policemen asked, “Are you Daryl Macon?” I don’t think I fully said the word “Yes” as I was tossed to the floor , given miranda rights and placed in handcuffs. Damn, I thought. That bus driver didn’t say anything about my daughter being bullied, but when I gave the bullies a taste of their own medicine, she called the heat on me. I ended up spending about eight hours in the local corrections facility, paid a $1000 fine and had to take anger management classes /participate in community service for a month. My simple assault charge was ultimately dropped, and I walked out of the corrections facility like Tupac and Madea, strutting and pimping – but let me tell ya, once your freedom is taken away, even for a few hours, it is no joke.

Cut to Taylor in elementary school last year. Taylor asked Lisa and me, “Was slavery really that bad?” We previously showed Taylor the miniseries Roots: The Next Generation and Boycott, one of my favorite movies, about Dr. Martin Luther King when he first became involved in civil rights. Taylor said her history teacher told her slavery was not as bad as it was portrayed in TV and movies; that some owners were nice people, and some slaves lived in pleasant conditions. My inner Jim Brown wanted to give that woman a STRONG talk-to, and I remembered what happened with Dawn – putting a finger in the face of the history teacher would probably mean 5-10 years.

Lisa scheduled a meeting with Taylor’s homeroom teacher, Taylor, and the history teacher. Lisa brought up Taylor’s mention of slavery in class, and the history teacher said, “Well you know, TV tends to exaggerate things, and…” “No,” I said calmly. “Slavery was bad. People not having the right to be free, to not have a choice is never right.” The history teacher looked at the homeroom teacher and said, “You know what I mean, right?” The homeroom teacher said, “That’s not right (the history teacher’s slavery instruction).” I told the history teacher, “It’s important that kids know that freedom is a right, it’s what this country fought for…” “OK, OK,” the history teacher said, wanting to end the discussion. I know I did not change the history teacher’s mind, and the history teacher knew that Lisa and I were not accepting of her off-curriculum teaching to our child.

About a month later, at the dinner table, Taylor said, “Dad, do you like sitting in the balcony of a theatre?”
“It depends. Sometimes. Why do you ask?”
“Mrs (history teacher) said in the past, black people could only sit in the balcony of a theatre, and it would not have bothered her because she prefers the balcony anyway.”

I didn’t know if that woman had a pointy hood in her closet, or was just plain ignorant, but I felt something had to be done. The history teacher was telling this to a class of kids with different backgrounds, and when I asked Taylor how she felt, Taylor told me, “She’s the teacher, she is supposed to be right.”

This time, I decided to contact the school board and inform them of the meeting discussion and what I was told by Taylor. I had a meeting scheduled during my lunch break, and the board had the school superintendent, the history department chair, and a number of other faculty members in attendance. I told the group that an inaccurate/biased account of history is a dangerous thing, that there would be expected outrage if stories of the Holocaust or Japanese internment camps were glossed over, and that our future should be aware of how valuable freedom/tolerance is at all costs.
The group thanked me for my feedback, giving me each of their business phone numbers and letting me know that I could contact them at any time. I’m pretty sure the history teacher was reprimanded; her cheerful demeanor became icy (the homeroom teacher told Lisa, “You did what you had to do”), and the history teacher began some sessions by stating “This is just my opinion…”
I have provided these two instances as some examples of experiences in my role as dad. It appears that some things are up to our kids to navigate, but we can always let our kids know that we “have their back.” If your kids know that you will prevent serious harm from coming to them, that as long as they are telling the truth, you are not afraid to face ANYBODY, they can build the confidence to take care of themselves when you’re not around. It’s part of life. I know that we live in a time of social media, where bullying and false statements can take place 24/7. What’s good about a cell phone it that it can be turned off (a difficult thing for a young person, I know), and it can be used as evidence of wrongdoing.
How are you navigating your children through these issues? I’d like your feedback.