Enough is enough
You Have Blue Eyes So No Treats For You Today
and other brainy life lessons from the fourth grade
I hated Brian Brown when I was in the fourth grade. He was mean, and he was stinky.
I mean both in the most literal of terms.
Brian was poor and even though I thought my family was poor, Brian’s family lived in a house with dirt floors and no indoor plumbing.
I knew this because he was my neighbor.
His family had a fireplace and no other means of heat in the winter.
My dad told us what we smelled on Brian and his siblings was smoke from their fireplace.
Until I met my husband many years later, I thought all wood heat made your house stink. My husband grew up with a wood-burning stove and he explained to me that properly vented chimneys have flues and when used properly, smoke couldn’t circulate back into the house and leave a pungent residue on everything.
Including mean little boys who can’t take baths every night or wear fresh clothes to school every day.
Since Brian didn’t have running water in his house, he only got a bath once a week if he was lucky and he almost never had clean clothes to wear.
We had water in my house and kids bathed every night before bed whether or not they wanted to.
Clean was my momma’s game and none of us had the balls to argue with her about it.
My mom washed my clothes once a week in a wringer washer.
She manually filled the tub of the washer with a water hose that ran from a spigot on the back of the house through a window on the back porch. She would add soap to the water and then the clothes.
She’d let the clothes soak for a while, and then she’d mix them up a bit with a stick to add some friction and make a soapy laundry stew.
To remove the bulk of the water before transferring into a rinse tub, she ran the clothes through a manual wringer. She cranked that wringer by hand, too, boys and girls. Girl power.
After sloshing the clothes around in a rinse tub of clean water, she ran them through the wringer a second time. She then hung the clothes outside on a clothesline to dry.
She did this for twelve years before she got an electric washer and dryer. For three bratty kids and a husband who worked in a tool shop.
My Momma was a saint.
But that’s a story for another day.
Brian pulled my ponytail every morning on the bus, and he also punched me in my arm every day at recess.
I hated him. I hated that he lived beside me. I hated that we had to ride the bus together. I hated that he always tried to sit next to me with his stinky, dirty bookbag leaning up against my Barbie lunch pail.
I really hated that he stank.
Most of all, I hated that my mom and dad made me be nice to him. There was serious hell to pay in my house for making fun of anyone, no matter the reason.
Color, gender, physical anomalies, it didn’t matter what. Making fun of, or merely mentioning any differences in another person was a reason to have your ass lit up.
“We are all God’s children, little ones, and we know not the struggles or burdens of any other walking His earth, so be nice. Even when you don’t want to because if I’m not watching, God is.”
Pretty words with Mom-steel behind them.
That Brian was a real pain in my nine-year-old ass.
One day, my fourth-grade teacher told us we would help her with an exercise. She asked kids with brown eyes to stand on one side of the classroom and blue-eyed kids to stand on the other side.
My friend Shelley had hazel eyes, so she stood with the brown-eyed kids. Brian had green eyes, so Miss Wray asked him to stand with the blue-eyed crowd.
Naturally, Brian came to stand his bad self right next to me and my blue eyes.
After all the shuffling, snickering and fidgeting that nine- and ten-year-olds are wont to do, Miss Wray walked over to her desk, pulled out a drawer, and took out a big red plastic bowl.
She removed the lid from the bowl to reveal a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies.
She had our undivided attention.
Miss Wray sat the bowl on her desk and addressing Shelley’s side of the room, she said, “Okay, come on up and grab a treat! I made them last night, just for you!”
Club Brown rushed up to her desk and stood in line to get their treats, smiling and laughing with one another while they waited for their turn at the bowl of chocolaty goodness.
After a few torturous minutes of watching our classmates gobble up cookies, Suzie Schulte, a petite ginger with big blue eyes and a million freckles on her face, raised her hand.
Miss Wray said, “Yes, Suzie?”
“When is it going to be our turn to have a cookie?”
Miss Wray frowned and said, “Never. There aren’t any cookies for blue-eyed kids.”
Jenny Reynolds, a girl who was already almost five feet tall in the fourth grade, blurted out, “But why not?”
Miss Wray spoke quietly. “Because I don’t like people with blue eyes.”
Club Blue stood looking at Miss Wray, our favorite teacher before today. Suzie Schulte gasped and started leaking crocodile tears.
Jenny’s blue eyes blazed with anger, her cheeks bright red. “But that’s not fair,” she said.
Every fourth-grader has a well-developed sense of what’s fair and what’s not.
Miss Wray crossed her arms over her chest and said bluntly, “I don’t care. It’s my class and my cookies. I get to decide who gets to eat them.”
Miss Wray’s words stung me. I couldn’t help it that my eyes were blue, any more than the other kids could help that their eyes were brown. I hung my head and tried not to cry.
Danny Black had big brown eyes. He was the most popular fourth-grader in our school. He put his cookie down on Miss Wray’s desk and said, “Thank you for making these cookies for us, Miss Wray, but I don’t think it’s fair that I get to have one and the other kids don’t.”
He walked over and stood with the blue-eyed kids.
The other kids eating sweets just looked at him. They didn’t want to give up their treats. It didn’t seem to bother them that we didn’t get to have cookies.
After all the kids with brown eyes had eaten one or two of the cookies, Miss Wray finally said, “Okay, everyone back to their seats.”
My group silently took their seats. Our sense of fairness and outrage had changed to sadness and reluctant acceptance.
The other kids were all smiling and giggling, riding their sugar high, feeling fortunate to have brown eyes.
My friend Shelley walked to her desk, but she didn’t look at me as she passed.
I sat down. I could barely contain the tears threatening to run down my plump cheeks. Brian walked by me on his way to his desk. He placed one of his grimy hands on mine and whispered, “It’s okay, don’t be sad. I never get cookies. Heck, I almost never get supper.”
I looked at Brian in surprise. I’d never missed a meal in my nine years. It had never once occurred to me that other kids didn’t get supper every evening.
I suddenly felt guilty for being sad over not getting a cookie.
Miss Wray asked us to quiet down. She looked around the classroom and then asked the cookie crowd, “Are you all happy that you got cookies today?”
They all shouted, “Yes!”
She then asked them, “Do you know why you guys got cookies today, but some of your classmates didn’t?”
Shelley said, “Because we have brown eyes, just like you, Miss Wray!”
The other kids nodded in agreement.
Miss Wray said, “Yes, that’s right. But let me ask you all a question. Do you think it’s fair that you guys got cookies just because you have brown eyes, but your friends with blue eyes didn’t get any?”
Danny Black said, “No. It’s not fair at all.”
Miss Wray said, “But you have brown eyes, Danny. Why didn’t you eat your cookie?”
Danny said, “Because it didn’t feel right to eat a cookie if everyone couldn’t have one.”
All the brown-eyed kids became very still and quiet.
Miss Wray gave Danny a quick smile before addressing the entire class.
“That’s right, Danny. Class, do you know why it wasn’t right to not let the kids with blue eyes have cookies today?”
Brian raised his hand.
“Brian?”
“Because none of us can help what color our eyes are.”
Miss Wray said, “That’s right. There are many things about ourselves we can’t change. Like the color of our eyes or the color of our skin. I want you to always think about how you treat other people and how they treat you.
“I want you guys to remember how you felt today. How did it feel to not get a cookie? And how did you feel when you got a cookie, but your friends didn’t? Should you have shared your cookies with the other kids? Why didn’t you?”
I think back to that little fourth-grade social experiment often. If you ask me, Miss Wray knocked that lesson out of the ballpark. I bet most of the other kids from that day remember it, too.
I’m no psychologist, but maybe Miss Wray taught us more than just that one lesson about fairness that day. Maybe our favorite teacher taught us not to hate others, period.
Or maybe she tried to teach us to think on our own and not engage in us vs. them mentality.
Brainy stuff for a fourth-grader.
We’ve all been a little less. Every single one of us has been rejected on some level that was out of our control.
Some unreasonable conclusion that unfairly penalized us.
Not educated enough.
Not experienced enough.
Not smart enough.
Not friendly enough.
Not young enough.
Not old enough.
Not pretty enough.
Not maternal enough.
Not big enough.
Not small enough.
Not conservative enough.
Not liberal enough.
Not middle-of-the-road enough.
Not rich enough.
Not poor enough.
We’ve all been not enough at some time in our lives.
Maybe right now.
Maybe tomorrow.
When is enough going to be enough?
It starts with us.
When do we say enough?
I treasure those lessons from fourth grade, and from my mom, too. I’ve enjoyed the company of so many diverse people in my life.
I’m a better person because of knowing every person I’ve met in my life.
I think about Brian Brown a lot, too. After that day in class, I didn’t mind so much when he sat beside me on the bus. When my mom put cookies in my lunch, I shared them with Brian. When other kids made fun of him, I was there to defend him.
I decked him in his nose one day, though, for pulling my pigtails. I gave him a bloody nose and my dad whipped my ass for that when I got home from school that day, but I didn’t care.
Brian really had that bloody nose coming to him.
