The T-Shirt I Don't Have....Yet

I spent my 40-year career working with teens and pre-teens, plus I am the mother of a woman who was once a teenager, so I think I know a little bit about how relationships between adults and adolescents work.  (Not to mention that both of my sibs and I were also teens once upon a time.)  The picture isn't always pretty, but there are no do-overs in life.  Sometimes you "gotta do what you gotta do" in order to keep the peace while moving forward...or trying to.

At what price is peace?  I found out somewhat early in my learning curve that sometimes we get horribly embroiled in self-propagating arguments that are meant to place blame on the other guy for things that go wrong...to deflect our own responsibility for our share in it...and it never ends well.  When we were a whole lot younger, my little brother would build intricate card houses right smack in the middle of the living room floor where the family would have to pass it in order to get to other rooms in the house.  It irritated me because sometimes floor vibrations or tiny breezes from those who passed would cause him to get nervous about the stability of his card house.  He would place a new card with less security than the last, and the house would fall.  If I happened to be the one who passed, he would yell, "Now see what you made me do?!"  It was an accusation, as if I had deliberately tried to ruin his happy little project.  I would try to protect myself by saying, "If you would put that somewhere else instead of right here in the middle of things, that might not happen."  You know the outcome.  I was wrong, and he was right.  Every.  Single.  Time.  No matter what.

When doing playground duty at school, I would often have to tell students to stop running recklessly all over the place.  Their response always was, "But he's chasing me!"  To which I responded, "He can't chase you if you don't run."  They looked at me as if I had just arrived from Mars.  Not be part of the chase?  What fun is that?  He is chasing me because I am running.  I am running because he is chasing me.  If I stop running, he will catch me...and then who wins?  What will happen to me then?

Over the years, I learned that the immature brain does not understand that blame-placing doesn't make sense.  The person blamed will argue in defense of self.  Heck, I do it, too, to a degree.  But I understand my own intent.  Others don't alway think of me in the same way that I do.  So...as I was raising my own pre-teen, then teen, and sometimes even adult daughter, I decided that the only way to take the sting out of the Blame Game was to accept culpability, no matter the issue.  It tends to knock the slats out of a brewing argument.  You got up too late to do your hair properly for school because your alarm didn't wake you up, so you blame me for not waking you sooner?  Oh...sorry.  I should have done that.  I dropped you off at the football game too close to other kids who could see me?  Oops!  Guess I haven't perfected invisibility yet.  Sorry.  My fault.  I didn't really feel responsible for all that was wrong with the world, but I understood that by not engaging in the argument about who was at fault for whatever bad things happened--by saying yes, it was my fault--I was disarming the potential argument-to-come.  "If you had blah, blah, I wouldn't have blah, blah.  No, it's YOUR fault, blah, blah, because YOU should have blah, blah."  See how that works?

Which leads me to the t-shirt.  I swore, many years ago, that I was going to have a t-shirt made that said, "Just so we understand each other, EVERYTHING IS ALL MY FAULT."  When I announced on Facebook that I was going to do that some day, I had a couple of defenders who told me that I wasn't at fault and shouldn't take blame for things I didn't do.  Bless their hearts.  They didn't get my point.  At the same time, there were at least six people who wrote to me to say, "I want one of those t-shirts, too"!

It also applies to conversations (recently) about politics and religion.  I had an online discourse with a former student--now a mother in her own right-- who home-schools because she has a major beef with public education that teaches things that are different from what the Bible says.  She had posted a very negative meme about public schools.  I called her on it.  This gal was one of my honor students way back when, but I had no idea she was a Bible-thumper.  (It boggles my mind that intelligent people can be so blind!)  In any case, in the short order of our online discussion, I came to understand that it was pointless to continue to reason with her.  She believes that the earth is 5,000 years old due to things the Bible says...that carbon dating is flawed...that evolution is poppycock.  In the midst of it, I just bowed out of the conversation.  I have also done so with politics.  There is no reasoning with the unreasonable...so that's my fault.  It's ALL my fault.  Get it?

If I ever decide to actually create the t-shirt that declares my innocence by way of fault, you will be allowed to put yourself on the list of people who want one also.  I will celebrate your guilt-acceptance with you.  We blame-recipients need to stick together!