Franklin elementary school and honor/shame

 My mother accompanied to school my first day to get me registered. It was a pretty long walk (for an elementary schoolkid); Our house was on the exact border between two schools. If we'd been another street to the west, I would have attended both a different elementary school and a different junior high school and certain details of my life might have been very very different. 

The class was already prepared to expect a new student from the Middle East, a girl named Fatim, who enrolled that same day. I think it helped that I wasn't the FNG by myself. Once it warmed up a little bit. I started leaving for school a little early so I could hang out with other classmates on the playground, using playing softball. I'd never had a chance to play while living in the inner city, and I was awful at the plate for a while. I think that helped balance out my ability to do well in school and helped me get accepted. The problems with gasoline and Japanese imports flooding the automotive market hadn't occurred yet, so I was seen mainly as an additional novelty in the class. Other than being nicknamed 'the professor' by most of the class, I didn't feel like I was harassed or teased as much as a kid named Bob who unfortunately had an unusually wide head and had been nicknamed 'Fathead'. To make it worse, in the 3rd grade class picture taken the previous year Bob was seated at the end of the front row with his hands folded in his lap with a facial expression that suggested a cross between strangulation and severe constipation. The only other memory I carry from fourth grade is that a classmate got adopted (by her stepfather presumably) and had her surname legally changed from McMahon to Ross and we acknowledged that in class.

In fifth grade, a couple of new kids moved in the school district who were in my grade. One was named Kenny but I never saw him in class. IIRC there were two fifth grade classes he was in one class and I was in the other class. But he lived only a block away and we used to race each other home at the end of the school day. The other kid was named Steve and we were in the same class. For some reason, we chose to hang out with each other during the school day. I think it was because we both liked to draw pictures of space battles and/or spaceships attacking targets on the ground.

We were both in Mrs. Weir's class. It was Mrs. Weir who gave me a B in English one quarter and commented in the margin; "Barry getting a B is like any other student getting a D." and my mother fixated on that: "Teacher said you got a D! Teacher said you got a D!" This is one of the first instances of where I had to deal with aspects of Asian culture that many westerners don't seem to comprehend fully.

I suppose I should mention that it really didn't matter what grades I brought home. If I got all A's and one B, an asian mother's typical response would be; 'Why the B?"  The idea that I would only draw comment when I underachieved  but never get any positive reinforcement did not motivate me to do my best, and I regret to admit that I coasted my way through school and college. 

Over time, I've come to understand how many cultures including the Chinese have honor/shame based behavior as their foundation. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, I will first differentiate between the concepts of guilt and shame. Guilt is the sense of remorse one associates with an act of commission (or omission). Shame is the sense that there is something inherently wrong with you no matter what you do. And it plays out in various ways including:

1)  Conditional love - which typically results in the ability to love oneself conditionally to be compromised, leading to lowered self-esteem and wondering if one is ever "good enough";

2) Fear of dishonoring one's family. I succumb to that even now; when I discuss my family of origin, I typically start off by qualifying things by explicitly stating that my parents did the best that they could. Fortunately I have been able to get past that to deal with the grief from the neglect I experienced. But for many, it remains a hindrance for many trying to deal with a lot of the shaming messages that they received;

3) Security driven by idolatry. In my case, the idol was my overall competency. my intelligence, my musical talent, my skills as a volleyball player, my having "made it' by the time I was 40, making six figures a year, with not only a home but also a rental property, etc. my partnering skills as a social dancer, ability to connect with emotionally challenged students as a tutor. I would go as far as to call it a sense of being bulletproof due to my competency.

4) Mistaking shame for guilt - which leads to self-punishment vs. reconciliation.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. Nor is the following list in the types of messages I got that reinforced my sense of shame:

1) Academics - which prompted this detour in this post. It didn't matter that I was acknowledged by my peers (and teachers) as being the smartest kid in class; I'd even read a college textbook for my Cleveland elementary schoolteachers while I was still in kindergarten. No matter what I did, it was never good enough. 

2) Physical shame - by the time I'd reached middle school age, I was routinely referred to as "punch-nose" or "flat face" by classmates. 

3) Emotional shame - back at E. 33rd, one of my Chinese neighbors around my age (who I will call Ralph) got into a fight instigated by the kid who lived upstairs from me. Even though it wasn't Ralph's fault, his mother publicly scolded him and slapped him, prompting Ralph to burst into tears. The neighbor kid who watched all of it, said to me later: "it really stings if you're slapped when it's cold." I couldn't explain it then, but I'd understood that the pain wasn't physical as much as it was emotional not just for being punished for defending himself, but there was shame in having the other person watch all of it.

4) Behavioral shame - I've always been musically inclined, and when I was in high school I wanted nothing more than to become a music teacher & teach high school music. Unfortunately, my father had a co-worker whose child had been a music major and had been unable to find work after graduation, and he made the assumption that the same would happen to me if I elected to pursue music. He didn't say much, but the displeasure in his observation that I got all H's & A's in band, choir and orchestra while getting a B in math was very obvious to me.  

5) Cultural shame - this was more a deal after elementary school and I stopped going home for lunch and began bringing Chinese foods for lunch, and I started getting teased for eating various things that were quite foreign. Actually, it started back at E. 33rd when Willie the kid upstairs made comments about the aromas coming from our kitchen window: "...when my mom cooks, it smells great. When your mom cooks, PEW!" whenever my mother cooked with fermented black beans or salted fish or salted shrimp paste, which in all fairness, are quite pungent and are aromas that are an acquired taste (or smell)

Honor is the flip side of the coin; you diminish honor when you do something that brings shame to one's self, family or total ancestry. The punishment is typically excommunication, and suicide is the only way to restore honor. 

Fortunately, I've come to grips (no pun intended) with a lot of the baggage I carried around for decades but it remains a work in process. Still, I've come a long way and am able to enjoy being me in a way I never could have even ten years ago.