DO WE ALL HAVE OUR LOCKER ROOMS?




“You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts,
You may house their bodies but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
  
-      Kahlil Gibran on Children


When all this Boys’ and Girls’ Locker-room controversy is raging outside, when
all and sundry are sitting on their judgement seats and handing out their verdicts on the ‘guilty’… I start wondering if there were ‘locker rooms’ while I was a young school boy… If dirty thoughts passed through my mind and if I and some of my friends chatted our private stuff.

Horrible thoughts do pass through my mind even now… The locker room is still there, very much there.

Am I alone here? Hope I am not…

None of the so-called ‘dirty thoughts’ come in a young one from his parents and teachers. Mine did not come from my parents or teachers. So, let’s stop blaming about upbringing of the child. The child is always as curious and as adventurous as a child should be… What’s right and what is wrong – yes, every child develops a fair sense of it through multiple disciplinary-sources. Then, it learns to make choices… I learnt to make my own choices, just as you did. My son learnt to make his choices on his own… So did all his friends.

So, today, when all of us are trying to pretend as though we never had our own locker rooms, we should be worrying about our own holier-than-thou attitude. Yes, the particular group of teenagers, apparently, were discussing something extreme and dangerous. They need to be corrected… Not punished and humiliated. Not made to think, that they have no right to make amends and live in this society again.

The school subject, that tries to inculcate in us what is right and what is wrong, is called the ‘Moral Science’. Frankly, how many of us really liked this subject? And, how many of us picked it up (what is right and what is wrong) from our moral-science classes?

My character is what I am in the dark! And, I have enough of dark stuff in me. But, my dark stuff – the dirty and dangerous thoughts - will always remain inside my locker room. I am sure so will be yours. But, if anyone tells me, that he/she never had a locker room, and never has one now, then, this will be my last Blog!

Seriously!




GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: alleksana

Video: Mike Youngquist

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