"Fighting Clothes"

I was once placed in a long-term substitute teaching position where I taught four English classes and one sociology class for a few months. With this position also came an advisement class.

Advisement is like an extended homeroom class. It is to be used as an opportunity to help the students that are placed in your care with anything that they might need, be it academic, or personal. The students that were placed in my advisement class were between the ages of fifteen and sixteen.

One morning when I was grading papers, I overheard a conversation between a group of girls in my class, as they waited for the bell to ring. These girls were talking loudly, and making no effort to keep me from hearing what they were saying.

Conversations between girls this age would normally hold no interest for me, but this particular one caught my attention, when it became focused on violence. They began to talk about the fights they had been in, and they stated that to get into a fight they had to be wearing their "fighting clothes" . They discussed this as well as how to use your high heeled shoe to beat someone in the face.

The final straw came when one of them said "one time when I had put a razor blade in my mouth to fight, I forgot and talked, and my mother had to take me to the emergency room for stitches."

That did it! I could no longer keep my mouth shut. I looked up at the girls and said "you have got to be kidding me! If I had exhibited that type of behavior when I was your age, my mother would have been beating me while I bled to death." "Let me also add that if I were to open my closet door, and look inside, I would have no idea what would constitute a fighting outfit."

They responded by saying, "you know, some dickies", as if they were simply informing me, in case I should ever need to know.

I doubt very seriously that I did any good when I lectured those girls that morning, but I did, at least, let them know that I was devastated by the things that they were saying.

I told them that I felt sorry for the young gentlemen of their generation. I said that I felt this way because, I was sure that they would be hard pressed to find a lady to marry.

I assured the girls that I doubted very seriously that the young men would want razor blade toting, dickie wearing, thugs to take home to meet their mothers, not to mention, to later become the mothers of their children.

The girls just looked at me as though they were shocked that I found their behavior so troubling, and that I also believed decent young men would as well. They did, however, change the topic of their discussion, and the bell rang shortly thereafter to dismiss them from my classroom.

I have, in the past, because of behavior such as this, stuck my head in the counseling office door to suggest a new elective entitled "Being a lady 101" and I have also kindly suggested that it be mandatory.

I did lecture this particular group of girls with everyone in the rest of the class listening, hoping they might learn something as well. (It was after all, advisement.)

I did what I could that morning to get these girls to take a good look at their attitudes and their behavior. Do I think they listened to me? No, probably not, but I do find comfort in the fact that I tried.

The filthy language and violent behavior of some of the young women today upsets me to the very core of my being.

I know that all young girls are not like this particular group. Some are still being taught to behave like ladies. One great example is that a good friend of mine and his wife sent their daughter to a class at the YMCA entitled "Perfectly Polished" not all that long ago. God bless the two of them for that. It gives me hope.

As for the other girls, I'm just going to pray for them. I'll pray for their safety, and I'll pray that God will give them enlightenment. I'm sure he knows, like I do, that they desperately need it.