(This is part two of a blog series I’m working on. You
can read part one here.)
It was a warm autumn evening in 1986. School had just started. I was in 9th grade.
In some schools this might mean a big change. Maybe a new building with different teachers
and even a new bunch of friends. Not in
my school. Not in my small town. It was the same building, same teachers, same
people I had known pretty much all my life.
Nothing ever changed except the one stoplight in our town, the only one
in our county.
Summer freedom had ended.
The days of relative calm and the corresponding lowering of my guard had
been brought to a close for the next nine months. The imprisonment of body and soul in an
institution and a routine which choked out creativity, originality, and
authentic personality had begun. It was
time to conform to the expectation of peers and to pretend I was normal like everyone
else. Just like everyone else pretended
to be normal like everyone else.
This return to routine also meant a return to other age
appropriate expectations. For me this
was represented by a return to church activities, particularly confirmation
instruction. I didn’t mind it. Church, like other things in my life, seemed
to be wired backwards. Fourteen year olds
shouldn’t enjoy church any more than fourteen year old boys should have crushes
on other fourteen year old boys. But I
did enjoy my church experience growing up due in large part to experiences like
the one that brought me to crossing the paved parking lot outside the local
movie theatre on that warm autumn evening in 1986.
It was a Sunday. I
had gone to church, as was expected of confirmation students. After worship I went to the church’s basement
and sat down at the table in the kitchen for…Sunday School.
Forget everything you know about stereotypical religious
education and Sunday School in general.
There were five of us who were “the regulars” who gathered at this
kitchen table weekly to learn from one of the most formative people who has
ever come into my life. She was “religious”
but not “holier than thou” religious.
She was a nurse who was enormously compassionate and understanding,
patient to a fault sometimes. And the
struggles her son, who had transitioned into early adulthood, gave her a
realistic and pragmatic view on the topics that teenagers faced in the mid-1980’s. Her son’s drug addiction inspired her to be
open and authentic with the riskier topics of addiction and other themes that
were considered too adult to be taught to a group of teenagers who were being
prepared to transition into adulthood in the eyes of the church.
My Sunday School teacher was cool.
I don’t remember how it came up but I know that by the end
of the hour in that kitchen that morning the plan had been made. We would meet back at the church at 6:00 and
pile into the teacher’s station wagon.
One of the other student’s mom would join us. We were heading to the movies. And not just any movie. We were heading to see “Stand By Me.”
Let me put things into perspective since I know that by
today’s standards “Stand By Me” is pretty tame.
Kids smoking and swearing? Kids
being honest about the troubles in their lives?
Kids going to find a dead body?
It was an “R” rated movie at a time and in a place where teenagers just
didn’t go to see “R” rated
movies. But we were going and our Sunday
School teacher was taking us.
There’s a scene about halfway through the movie where two of
the four main characters of the film are talking privately. Gordy is trying to convince Chris to join him
in taking some of the “smart kid classes” when they go back to school in the
fall. “You’re smart enough.” awkward
Gordy assures his friend. “They won’t
let me.” Chris, the tough guy/leader of the misfit gang, says quietly. Gordy presses him to explain and Chris
continues. “It’s the way that people
think of my family in this town. It’s
the way they think of me. I’m just one
of those low life Chambers kids.”
“That’s not true.” Gordy argues flatly.
“Oh, it is.” Chris declares fiercely. “No one even asked me if I took the milk
money that time. I just got a three day
vacation.”
“Did you take it?”
“Yeah, I took it! You
know I took it! Teddy knew I took
it. Everyone knew it, I think. But maybe I was sorry and I tried to give it
back.”
“You tried to give it back?!”
Chris shrugs. “Maybe. Just maybe.
And maybe I took it to Old Lady Simons and told her and all the money
was there. But I still got a three day
vacation because it never showed up. And
maybe the next week Old Lady Simons had this brand new skirt on when she came to
school.”
“Yeah! It was brown
and had dots on it!”
“Yeah. So let’s just
say I stole the milk money but Old Lady Simons stole it back from me.” Chris presses. “Just suppose that I told the story. Me.
Chris Chambers. Kid brother to
Eyeball Chambers. You think that anyone
would have believed it? And do you think
that bitch would have tried anything like that if one of those douchebags from
up on The View would have taken the money?
Hell no! But with me? I’m sure she had her eye on that skirt for a
long time. Anyway, she saw her chance
and she took it. I was the stupid one for
even trying to give it back.”
And then we, the audience, see just how talented of an actor
River Phoenix was.
Chris’ lip starts trembling and his voice becomes heady and
he starts sniffing back tears. “I just
never thought…I never thought that a teacher….Oh, who gives a fuck anyway? I just wish that I could go someplace where
nobody knows me.” And tough guy Chris
cries.
At the time, my fourteen year old self could completely
identify with Chris Chambers. Not that I
had ever stolen anything or been accused of stealing anything. But in Chris’ desire to be someplace else, to escape the stigma
attached to his name and the judgment from the people around him—my fourteen
year old self heard his own voice in Chris’ desperate wish. Rumors, gossip, judgment, and everyone
thinking they knew absolutely everything about absolutely everybody—that I could identify with in a painful
way from the confines of “my closet.”
It’s one of my all time favorite films, “Stand By Me,” and
so I find myself watching it regularly.
As the years went by and I grew to both understand the world and these
fictional representations of very real people in the world, I began to see this
powerful scene differently. This is more than a kid feeling trapped by the
sins of his family and the judgment of his community. This is a kid who’s beginning to take back
control of his story. It’s from this
point onward that we hear more and more from the adult Gordy, who is narrating
the story, that Chris, unlike Teddy and Vern, takes the heavy academic classes
with Gordy while Teddy and Vern disappear into the crowd, having taken the more
“traditional” classes for people of their “class.” Chris graduates and becomes a lawyer, a “peace
maker,” the adult Gordy calls him at one point.
There is nothing more damaging to a person’s self-esteem and
self-concept than to let other people tell their story. It limits us.
It handicaps us. It puts us into
a box. When people, even
well-intentioned people, decide what our themes and motives are, what our story
is, how we could and should interact and react to the world around us—when we
allow other people to tell our story, we lose ourselves to their
interpretations and expectations. We
even run the risk of believing what others think and believe is the truth about
us.
This works both ways, by the way. It’s not always about adopting the “negative”
interpretations of our identities that others try to apply to us. “Positive” reputations can be just as
damaging. Think about how many musicians
and actors have crashed and burned because they started to believe all the hype
surrounding them. It’s more difficult to
step away from attempts at wrestling this kind of control away from ourselves
because, frankly, who doesn’t like to hear about how awesome we are? There’s a huge difference between
acknowledging a compliment and adopting another’s view of who we are and how
awesome they think we are. Sometimes
being told that you can do no wrong only to discover that you can is more damaging
than being told you can do nothing right and then discovering that you actually
can do many things right.
I don’t know what it is in people that makes them want to
recast the people around them for their purposes. It might just come down to convenience. It makes things much easier when we think we
have everything figured out and everyone does what we want and responds the way
we wish.
Today I struck YouTube gold.
I’ve been chewing on this post for a while and trying to come up with a
really good example of someone taking control of their story, someone who is
able to speak to the struggle and occasional pain a person experiences when
they try to push back against the confines of the box in which they’ve been
placed. Today, not even an hour after it
had been posted, this
video caught my attention.
I love Chris’ video for a number of reasons. The first is the sincerity with which he
speaks, particularly when he talks about his desire to share parts of himself
and show the things in which he believes.
As the video unfolds we realize the Chris that begins the video is a
Chris from a week ago who just couldn’t find the right words or work up enough
courage to take control of his story. I
don’t want to interpret or reinterpret Chris’ words or motivation but, taken at
face value, I think he presents a very genuine struggle with enduring questions
and allusions to his possible identity.
I think that a lot of his care
and hesitancy in telling his story here is that he wants to be honest about who
he is and take possession of the narrative of his life but he also desperately
doesn’t want to appear judgmental or hurt anyone in the process. If I’m wrong or missing something, I’m hoping
that Chris will let me know. I have to
say, though, that this is one of the best candid and uncontrived conversations
I’ve ever heard on the topic.
It’s amazing to me how YouTube has become a vehicle of
empowerment which encourages people more and more to simply tell their story. I think it’s like anything; when a person
starts there’s a certain amount of finding your voice that takes place but
eventually authenticity begins to show through.
We, the audience, learn more about you, the artist, and we begin to see
your personality, your values, your passions, and even your fears. You inspire us to be the best us we can
be. Through honest conversations like
this one of Chris’, we become emboldened and brave. We discover our own voice and then we use it
to share our story.
Here’s the thing. I’ve
blogged a little bit before about the struggles of being in the position that I’m
in. I will not deny it: I am very jealous of LGBTQ youth and
young adults today because of how “easy” you have it compared to those of us
who came before you. You tell your
stories honestly. You even own your fear
and uncertainty. Like my fourteen year
old self seeing River Phoenix playing a character in a movie who wanted to
escape to a place where he could be himself, I look at you and wish the same
thing. I end up going through the, “If
onlies” at breakneck speed. “If only I
could have had those opportunities…” “If
only I could have had a family like that….”
“If only the internet had existed when I was that age…” “If only I could have just had the courage to
be honest.”
But the problem is that if any of those “if onlies” were
true, my story wouldn’t be my story.
Many of the experiences I’ve had, like the experiences many of us have
had, have been far from pleasant or ideal.
Things have not “been fair.” But
these downs—all of these negative experiences and painful struggles—have been
MINE. They help to define me and create
my story just as much as all of the good things I so easily own and
celebrate. Without these experiences and
the knowledge that has come with them I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now,
a position of hopefully helping others to be true to themselves.
So, yes, I sometimes watch YouTube videos with a wistful eye
and wish that my life could have been something else. We all do that. It’s human nature. But we can’t let that desire for a life that
simply isn’t ours force us to abandon our own stories. In the end this becomes just as destructive
and damaging as letting someone else define us.
There is absolutely no one in the world better suited to
tell your story than you. You’ve been
there every step of the way. You’re the
only one who can truly speak to your motivations and your decisions. You’re the only one who can detail your joys
and sorrows. You’re the only one who can
competently identify the themes in your life because it is your life.
And, believe me, people want to hear your story.
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