Lions and Tigers and Bears

When we was in junior high school and riding the bus regularly, the parochial school kids rode along with us, all neatly pressed in white shirts, plaid skirts or pants and blue blazers. They carried backpacks with the St. Joseph's emblem and brown bag lunches and we called them cookies, as if they'd all been cut out and baked from the same mold. They were prim and remarkably well behaved, quiet kids and the chaos of the busrides never seemed to touch them. They were protected and insulated by their uniformity, all cut from the same cloth, all predictable and plain vanilla. We saw them as easy targets, clustered together in their little groups and always standing out. We were not especially nice to them, feeling, I suppose, an ill defined sense of resentment at their togetherness and group sameness. There was safety in numbers in those uneasy school days, safety and a sense of belonging and I think on some level, we realized that and envied it. In many ways, it was an us and them world. Still they were given little slack - teased about their uniforms and catechism, the high school kids would steal their lunches or bus money, and in winter they would be victimized by snowballs. They never fought back, never lashed out, never retaliated and their pacifism only encouraged more abuse. Unlike so many of us, they had learned to turn the other cheek and to their credit, they practiced what they had learned against a never ending stream of bullying and merciless taunting.

By high school, we had all grown up a little and although we all still rode the same bus to school, the atmosphere had calmed. There was still a distinct separation between those who wore uniforms and those who didn't but the teasing had been passed to the next generation and we had no time for such childish games. They went their way and we went our's, riding the same bus each day but not interacting, neither side willing to make a move toward the other. I wonder now what we all missed by this stubborness and pride, what friendships might have formed but didn't, what common interests we might have discovered but didn't.

There's comfort and security in conformity yet it can also breed suspicion and alienation. We should learn to appreciate the former and overcome the latter in all things. A pride of lions may not have much use for a family of tigers, but they're all still cats even if divided by nature or society or competition. Unlike we humans, lions and tigers and bears don't divide themselves along lines of differences or prejudice - lucky them.