For some reason, Spanish class seems to attract the crazies. Or maybe just the horror of learning another language, coupled with the fact that the teachers actually encourage students to talk in these classes brings out people’s personalities more then in the rest of my classes. Either way, I have crazy friends in Spanish class.
One kid constantly complains to the teacher about how difficult the tests are and attempts to beg the answers out of her half-way through the exams. I’ve had him in two spanish classes now and I’ve grown used to his funny sayings, his perpetual absent-mindedness and his ability to charm the teacher.
I have a new kid in my class this Fall though. From the first few classes, I gathered he was a flirt, non-academic, kid who acted like nothing mattered. However, I was pretty sure that, like most people, stuff did get to him, he had just figured out how to cover it.
The funny thing was, I figured all this out even though I didn’t speak to him once. In a mixture of hearing him talk to a friend before class, hearing him talk to the teacher and just observing his reactions, I’d worked out how he was.
Then, a week ago, I started talking to him and he mentioned that he had been to Afghanistan twice. Heavy combat zones, 50% casualties.
It’s funny how knowing one fact about a person makes me reconsider everything I know. Suddenly, I didn’t view him as the silly kid in the back of the class who wouldn’t care if he got a “c.” I had this picture in my head of him with sand in his hair, slow-motion climbing over a sand dune as he swept a small, Afghan boy out of harm’s way.
Then I had an incredibly stupid, but incredibly important realisation.
He was not that guy. He was still the kid in the back of the class who wouldn’t care if he got a “c.” Just because he also went to Afghanistan didn’t redefine who he was. What a person says and does define who they are.
It’s so incredibly easy to look at one big thing people do or have done, and redefine our image of them and be incredibly wrong.
I know amazing soldiers and I started to mentally group this kid in with them instead of just judging this new fact based on what I already knew about him.
How often do we do this to others without meaning to?
I see a guy smoking and think he must be a loser.
I see a person wearing a t-shirt with a stain on it and think they don’t know fashion.
If I saw a photograph of a stranger, I wouldn’t assume I knew where they worked so why do I assume I know the motives and feelings of the people I see when I walk down the street?
I judge people a lot. I’m intuitive and I can easily guess people’s motives and feelings based on little things. But I can also over-judge, and it’s a bad habit. It’s a habit that I’m going to fix.
I’m not quite sure how this post should be labeled. Warning? Confession? Maybe I’m just hoping someone else has this problem to?
Whatever the reason, these thoughts have been scrambled around in my head for the past few days just waiting to get out. Here they come…
but I write over at 
