Cold and gray days seem to bring out the dark sides of personalities. I can say without a doubt that this past week I have have personally heard people be of sharper tongues, use excess vulgar language, be impatient, disruptive, more demanding, and far less delightful than normal. With these seemingly revolving periods of snow showers and wind, I guess it can become wearing on even the saintliest of people. I can tell the cabin fever is starting to kick in with people wanting to make housing changes. More times than I can remember this past week I have found myself going on the defense with some of the general public’s comments about the city, the country and the world around us. Just today, I was showing a home to a charming couple who have three sons in the school system. The wife was telling me about some of the language that is coming out out the mouths of the students towards the school’s administration as well as faculty. She went on to say that she is convinced that many of the children’s parents don’t even know what type of behavior their children have while at school. I mentioned to her what I believe would be a good start at changing that form of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde behavior with the children, is to begin with two or three parents who are willing to take their children and meet with the school’s administration and faculty and agree upon what standards of behavior are acceptable and what are not—and stick to it. I firmly believe that if this form of standardization within a given school starts to catch on with parents and students, you will in time find that the real culprits of classroom chaos will find themselves shunned as well as alienated from the rest of the student body. Most rebellious students want acknowledgement through either being considered a hero by the other students, or becoming a celebrity in a bad way.
I remember too well the handful of rebellious and disruptive students in the school I attended when growing up. I can’t think of any one of them making anything of themselves years later. They just seemed to grow smaller and smaller within the worlds they themselves created. I am convinced without a doubt, that positive attitudes are everything when it comes to our jobs of living and working within our communities. Let’s all start raising the bar on our personal as well as community standards, so we can start re-glueing the loosened parts of our localities back together.
