Real Courage

6/16/10
If you ever grew up with anything peculiar about you, you know what its like to get made fun of. Though for most kids it's the way their nose is flat or their hair is frizzy, but my situation is a lot different from most kids. For my entire life, that fact that I'm Jewish has never really sat well with people for some reason. They always find it entertaining or easy to make fun of. Even now, when I go to high school and I am around people who you would think are more mature, they find it hilarious to give me the nickname "Jew." I might be odd, but I don't get it. I don't get the humor in the name, it's the truth, I am Jewish. I just don't really want that as the name people put in their contacts or the name they write on the board. I'm more than just a "Jew." I'm a person, who just happens to be Jewish.

Having relatives or ancestors who were in the Holocaust is a burden. Whenever you see pictures of a concentration camp, or when someone mentions Hitler, your mind automatically jumps to seeing the tattoo on their arms. A tattoo that was put there against their will, a tattoo that's there to mark them as someone else's property. When people make a joke about it, you wince because you think of them, starving, trying to survive. For most of your childhood you take it, brush it off and act like it's no big deal. It is a big deal though.

Sometimes when people make jokes, I laugh too, I don't want to make them feel awkward. I don't think they know their being offensive. It's pretty obvious though. The most vivid "joke" I remember was in seventh grade. One of my friends was sitting behind me, we weren't close, but we talked about bands and music, superficial stuff. I was reading a book when he tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, hoping to talk about The Grateful Dead or The Pixies; I saw the big grin on his face. His finger went up in the air, I didn't know what he was doing. A heart, maybe? Then I realized a Swastika, a symbol that once meant peace, but now mean something totally different. He started laughing, assuming I would join in. The person who sat next to me saw and began chuckling too. I sat there, bewildered by what he had just done. In my mind, it wasn't funny. In my mind, I saw people suffering. In my mind, I saw my family being killed off one by one.

I kept it in, I kept the tears and the hyperventilating in. How could something so simple, so little, hurt me this much? I sat there, staring at the board, when suddenly the bell rang, and I was off to Orchestra. As I was walking, breathing deeply to keep the feelings down, I saw the office door, I saw it open. I ran to it, I felt the adrenaline pump through me. I have never been in the office other than to be picked up or to be congratulated by the principal on my grades. It looked completely different. I waited for the blonde woman in front of me to finish. As soon as she moved, and I saw the woman behind the desks eyes, tears began pouring out. I was so embarrassed, nothing like this has ever affected me this intensely before. She came around the desk and held me. She smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, like a candy bar. She slowly sat me down and asked what happened. Through the wheezing and the snot, I got it out. She gave me a tissue, I guess the snot was everywhere. "I grew up Jewish, I know what it feels like," she said.

With that statement, I felt normal. She gave me a couple of minutes before sending me into the vice principals office. With my red eyes and puffy cheeks, I held my head high, and marched myself in there. The Urbanator, that's what they called him, he was that strict. When he saw me though, he smiled and said, "Come in honey."

I told him everything. I cried, a lot. So many years of pent up anger, of feeling like a weirdo, had finally come out of me. I stood up to it, I didn't tattletale, I told someone. I felt proud because for the first time in my life, I wasn't ashamed of being a "Jew."