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You Owe Me Because I’m (fill in the blank) and How My Daughter Nina Turned Lemons into Lemonade

by Theresa Fritz Camoriano

These days, there is no end of people telling you that you owe them something because of who they are.  You may owe them because they are black.  You may owe them because they are poor.  You may owe them because they are women, or gay, or from a particular religious group.  By now, you know the routine and can easily fill in the blank with the appropriate group identity.  Remember that these supposed obligations are legal obligations, enforceable by the government, as opposed to moral obligations, which you are not forced to fulfill.  My response is, “Baloney!”.

Why?  For several reasons:

          1.          First, a person does not legally owe another person anything unless the first person has actually harmed the other person or has undertaken some contractual or other similar relationship with the other person that creates an obligation.  If you have physically harmed me or my property, or if you breached a contract with me or adopted me or married me, then I may have a claim against you.  Otherwise, you don’t owe me anything no matter how poor, black, female, or other (fill in the blank) I am.

          2.          Even if you did harm me, I’d better make a claim against you within a reasonable period of time, or else all bets are off.  If I want to claim damages for false imprisonment on behalf of one of my ancestors who was a slave, even if I could prove that my ancestor was a slave, and even if I could prove that you were the slave owner who owned my ancestor, any statute of limitations has long since run out.  If I am going back to dig up a grievance that is fifty or one hundred or more years old in order to make a claim for damages, I should just hang it up.  It’s simply too late now.  I should have made my claim 50 or 100 or more years ago -- not now. 

          3.      Finally, I do myself real harm if I spend my energy fussing and fuming about my unhappy condition and trying to blame other people for it and wallowing in self-pity instead of figuring out what I personally can do to improve my own situation.  The world can be a very rough, inconsiderate place, so I need to figure out how to be strong and tough enough to deal with it.  If I am poor, maybe I need to work on getting a better job and a better education, or maybe I should try to figure out how to make myself more useful to my existing employer so he will have a reason to pay me more.  If the people around me abuse me because I am (fill in the blank and make it something other than rude and obnoxious or useless), then maybe I am hanging around with people who are unworthy of my company, and maybe I should seek out some decent human beings who will treat me with respect as I also treat them with respect.

          Who among us hasn’t been treated badly by someone for no justifiable reason?  Of course it is not fair, and of course it is upsetting.  But it is not cause for pulling out your gun to shoot other people or calling up your lawyer to sue them.  The use of force (legal or otherwise) should be a last resort, not a knee-jerk response to every affront.  If we encourage the use of one type of unwarranted force (such as lawsuits), we should not be surprised if we get more use of other types of unwarranted force (such as shootings).  As an example of a person who has been mistreated and who has handled the situation very well, I introduce you to my fourteen-year-old daughter, Nina.

          Nina is in the process of finishing the eighth grade at Anchorage School, where many of her classmates have been rude and abusive to her for the past two or three years.  In their crowd, the way you become one of the "in" group is to pick on someone who is not "in".  Nina has always refused to be abusive to others and has come to the defense of others, which has made her the person to abuse in order to be "in".  In all her classes, Nina sits alone, because the other students think it would be very "uncool" to sit next to her.  Her fellow students have teased her, snubbed her, laughed as they turned out the lights on her so she had to feel her way down a long corridor in the dark, thrown her backpack into the hallway in order to get her into trouble, and engaged in many repeated abusive behaviors against her.  Have I wanted to grab them and shake them or their parents?  Of course!  But I have explained to my daughter that this is their problem, not hers.  The reason kids behave this way is because they are insecure, and it makes them feel big to gang up together and put someone else down.  I wish their parents had taught them to behave in a more civilized, respectful manner, as I have taught my children, but they haven’t, and that is reality.  I wish the teachers would put a stop to the abuse, but the fact is that one of her teachers is just as juvenile and abusive as the kids.  Is that fair?  Of course not!  But it is reality.  (Of course, if we did not have force-based government schools, the market would cause that teacher to seek out a line of work to which she is better suited, but that is a story for another day.)

          Nina has already decided that she will continue to excel and do her best and stand up for what is right no matter what kind of abuse she gets from others.  Instead of becoming angry and bitter or wallowing in self-pity or seeking vengeance (like the "you owe me" crowd), she has become stronger as a result of this painful experience.  While I wanted to take her out of this school long ago, she insisted that she wanted to graduate from the school she had been in since kindergarten and that she would not let her classmates cause her to leave.  I am impressed that she has persisted and has used this very unpleasant situation to learn some important lessons at a fairly young age. 

          Soon, she will be graduating and leaving this abusive setting.  Fortunately, she has chosen a high school in which the students appear to be genuinely respectful and kind to one another, and she will go on to that high school as a strong, secure, self-assured young lady who will not allow herself to be harassed or bullied by anyone and who will continue to do her best and do what is right.  She will also continue to refuse to abuse others, no matter how much pressure she is under.  I know very few adults who have developed the backbone and strength of character that Nina already has at age 14.  I am very proud of her for turning a lemon into lemonade.  And it is very sweet!