Nineteen Minutes

In her latest book, "Nineteen Minutes," Jodi Picoult aptly presents parents' newest nightmare: that one day a child will shoot up their child's school. The novel is gripping, the characterization real, poignant, and clear. Picoult doesn't pour sap; parents are portrayed honestly as conflicted individuals with their own dreams, challenges, and flaws. The parallel presentation of past and present shows the potential path of a high school shooter: a boy who was bullied on his first day of school and every day thereafter; his parents' helpless frustration at their inability to protect their son; and the mistakes adults make with all the best intentions. Though I anticipated the final courtroom twist, that doesn't make the book any less enjoyable.

The question is; will anybody listen?

In a small farm town not too far from where I type, on a spring evening when the temperature was low and the enthusiasm was high, an entire town attended a hockey game of the local team. An entire town sat in the arena to cheer on their young men. And an entire town sat and did nothing as the younger brothers of these young men took another of the town's boys... and beat him repeatedly against the cement wall of the arena.

In Picoult's book, the parents have the 'excuse' of not being present when bullying occurs. The teachers are likewise often absent, though sometimes they ignore bullying because they believe that intervention only worsens the attacks.

In this small and very real town, however, the adults had no such excuse. The attack happened right in front of them - unless, of course, it was happening beside them.

In Picoult's book, the parents tolerated the attacks either because they didn't know about them, or because they felt obligated to 'toughen' up their son.

In contrast, adults of this small town - parents, teachers, religious leaders, community members, law enforcement agents - ignored this and other attacks -including public beatings, stalking, and vandalism - because the boy is, to put it nicely, 'weird.' He's just a little 'different.' 'Odd.' 'Not quite right.' In a larger town, he'd likely be diagnosed as falling on the mild end of the Asperger's Syndrome spectrum. This is a sweet, inquisitive, but socially confused male who needs support and guidance as he struggles to find a place in this world. Instead, in a community surprised to hear that first-cousin marriages are illegal in most Canadian provinces, this boy is sufficiently 'different' as to make it... well, not ACCEPTABLE, you understand, but certainly understandable. Children, you see, are rather like chickens - they don't tolerate differences. You put a chicken with a birth defect into a yard with other chickens, and those other birds will peck the first one to death. So really, is it any wonder that this small town's youths have been abusing their peer for the majority of his young life?

An easy remedy would be for the community leaders, religious leaders, parents and teachers to step in and teach tolerance, to model the merits of valuing this child, or at least to band together to increase supervision so he isn't left vulnerable on his way to and from school, during recess or at lunch. But that's not gonna happen. So, the child's parents, who have lived in this community for all of THEIR lives, who have a home and jobs and family here, are faced with a choice that no family should have to make: leave, risk losing everything, and move to a larger community where their son can start afresh and maybe, just maybe, get the understanding and support that he deserves; or stay, and daily face the knowledge that they can't protect their son, and one day he may kill himself... or finally snap and do what more and more troubled young people seem to be doing these days... drawing a line and fighting back. Easy decision to make, perhaps, but heart-wrenching and not always feasible.

I was approached the other day by a teacher who is overwhelmed and desperate as she watches her class of grade 4 students turn on a classmate with different problems but facing no less intolerance. She asked me what she could do to help this student. I asked the religious persuasion of the children; as I already knew, they all attend one of a few local churches. "Then it's simple," I said, wondering which one of us I was trying to convince. "Remind them of what they hear in Sunday School every week... that they are all made by God, and that God loves every one of them. Then ask them who they think they are to mock God's creation, to suggest that a fellow child of God is defective? Ask if they want to incur God's wrath by finding fault with His work." And then we shed a few tears together -metaphorically- wishing it was that easy, wishing that God really would spare a minute to send down a lightening bolt of recrimination and spare this, His fallen sparrow, from further pain.

There is no easy solution to the problem of childhood bullying and peer violence. It takes intense supervision from adults, many long talks about respect and tolerance and accepting everyone for their unique contribution to the group. It also takes boosting the self-esteem of both bullies and victims: encouraging and teaching the victims how to stand up for themselves, and encouraging the bullies to see self-worth in something other than the status obtained by maintaining the violent status quo of "us" versus "them." It takes teaching bystanders ways to intervene and diffuse dangerous situations, or at least how to get help from adults. It takes sweat, tears, time, and love. The parents of so many students lost in school shootings would tell you it's time well spent.

And to the parents of the small town near me? We're all farmers, whether we live in rural Manitoba or inner-city Vancouver. We get what we plant.