Article 21: “Stupid”

When I was very young, I was playing in the sand at a playground near our house. I was maybe two years old. My parents took me there quite often. I came upon a sandcastle. I didn’t build it, but being two years old, I instinctively wanted to destroy it with my bare feet. So, I did.

There were much bigger kids on the monkey bars looking down at me. They were the sandcastle construction workers. They were, understandably, angry with me. But I didn’t understand. I was also too young to understand the term “stupid,” which they projected down to me from their perch.

When it was time to leave and my dad was fastening me in to my car seat, I said to him, “Daddy, I’m stupid,” to which he replied,” No, you aren’t! Who told you that?” I told him my version of the story and he went back and had a talk with those kids.

Ever since that day, in the back of my mind, there is a brand that won’t go away. STUPID! I have never been able to shake it. No matter if I did well in school or if I’m able to solve problems outside of the structured learning environment; always that critic in my head creeps to the surface. Especially when I come upon a problem I can’t fix, or a question I can’t answer.

Words have a lot of power. Even more than we know. On a playground thirty years ago, a few kids called me stupid and it stuck. Everyone should know the potential damage that their words can produce. Words have the power to destroy and to create. We decide what comes out of our mouths and we have the power to change lives with our voices.

Let your voice be heard, and let your words be kind. Change the world one person at a time and we could reduce the hate and the societal stigma that surrounds the mentally ill, the less fortunate, the races and the sexes different from our own. Create positive change.

—SJB