Most kids do not want to go to school because of the thought of doing classwork. Or carrying books on their back everyday. Or being stuck in class for 6 hours a day. But for me, I was afraid of being teased everyday.
I woke up in the morning. Got ready, dressed myself for the first day of school from fall break. I put myself into school uniform, shorts and TOMS. This was my first day wearing TOMS to school, thinking I would get a lot of credit being unique.
Aliamanu Middle School was filled with many military kids. Mostly blacks or whites. Aliamanu had very few locals. Which meant a lot of different type of cliques. Which also meant that I didn't have many friends in school.
As I walked through the walkways, I saw people looking at the bottom half of my body. I knew they were judging me at my appearance. It was like I could read their thoughts. "Why is he wearing girl shoes?" I knew this was a bad idea.
During school, I get comments about the clothes I wear. "Dude, you look gay". "You look weird" . It irked me everyday. Every single day, I get looks from kids. Looking at my feet. I couldn't wait to get back home to escape this jail called school. But when I get home, I hop on Facebook. I check for notifications and status updates. Numerous of times, I get posts on my wall that tease me about my shoes. I even got private messages from people saying that I'm a fag for the clothes that I wear. Even my own friends didn't want to be seen with me and my TOMS. Only a few stayed with me. They were true friends. They didn't care about how I dressed. But others still didn't stop.
I made different solutions so that the teasing would stop. I always thought that if I ignored them, that eventually they would stop. They didn't. I tried wearing different shoes everyday. But they always found a way to tease me about my TOMS. They just couldn't stop. I was laughed at, teased at, for trying to be being myself. I was just trying to be different. Why would others care about some guy that wears something different?
I was full of frustration and anger. At the time, I didn't know how to make it stop. So the only way to make them stop was to take a stand for myself. I wanted to show them judging a person by their appearance was wrong. And being different wasn't so bad either. After months of being teased, I finally took a stand on what I believed in. I promised myself that I was going to confront the next person who teases me.
The next day, I was back in school. Sitting in class, waiting for someone to comment on my shoes. "Why do you wear girl shoes everyday?," said by some guy, who shall not be named. I took a deep breath and said,"Cause I'm trying to be different." He looked confused. "I'm trying to be different because there are so many lookalikes that I'm trying to be original, I'm trying to be myself. And so what if I'm different? Are you gonna judge someone cause of they what clothes they wear?" He was shut down. He didn't know what to say. He turned around and was silent. The feeling of finally saying what was on my mind was incredible.
One of reasons why I am the man I am today is because of this story. After confronting everyone that judged me, the teasing slowly went away. I used my voice to take a stand for what I believed in. I believed in that you shouldn't judge people for the wrong reasons. In the end, I was trying to be a more mature person. I now look at everyone equal, no matter what they wear. No matter what they look like, or their ethnicity, or their sexuality. Don't judge people for the wrong reasons, everyone is equal in God's eyes.
