"My deeply insensitive comment to this boy so long ago might have made me cool for a day in the eyes of my fellows, but its repercussions have lasted since then."

Larissa Kaye Batten (LLbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.

Sticks and stones never broke my bones, but names have always hurt me.

What can I say? I am a sensitive soul. I have reacted more vehemently to what others have said to or about me than to the time the neighborhood bully knocked out my front tooth.

Likewise, I remember with a more saddened heart the day I lashed out at a fellow school kid than the time I punched a neighbor girl in the stomach.

I do not condone either of my actions, and I have made amends for both. But I still wince, and grieve, when I remember the innocent, little boy I hurt with my slanderous mouth.

Nothing was more important to me that day in the lunch room than to capture the attention of my fellow students. I was a timid, studious kid, and I was not one to pick on my fellows to make new friends.

Yet something stole over my soul that day, and I will never forget what happened.

The petite boy had arrived from a country that meant nothing to my self-centered spirit, and my eyes were focused solely on his sickly and mostly bald head. Alas, I had found my "catalyst" to be cool for a day.

A catalyst is something that causes change without changing itself. I must have believed I could use this poor boy’s head to change my un-cool circumstances without changing both of us forever.

I proceeded to announce to a group of boys and girls that pouring milk on this boy’s head might help his hair to grow.

Approximately 20 years later now, I have been assigned to send him a postcard requesting any news he would like to contribute to the alumna magazine.

My deeply insensitive comment to this boy so long ago might have made me cool for a day in the eyes of my fellows, but its repercussions have lasted since then.

I highly doubt most of the men and women who were once my classmates think about how cool I was that day.  I wonder whether the grown man who was the "sickly" boy reflects on that day anymore.

My heart and soul have walked on for 20 years now knowing who really was the sick child back then. I was. Yes, I was the one so desperate to garner the accolades of my classmates that I was willing to mark my conscience forever.

The saving grace is the lesson I learned. I do not know what I learned that whole year in school, but I carry with me still the lesson I learned from my slanderous tongue.

Sticks and stones might break a few bones, but names can be just as destructive.

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