PART NINE
How to Break the Most Treacherous Glass Ceiling of All
Sometimes People Are Tigers
Every week, when I was a kid, my mother took me to the National
Geographic Society to see a film. The one on tigers invades my nightmares
these many years later. Sitting there in the darkened theater, I watched a
mother give birth to three tiny cubs. One was born with a mangled leg. I
witnessed how all the other tiger cubs excluded him. And right there in
front of the cameras, he was totured to death by the others. I remember
crying and thinking how the healthy cubs were like a few of the kids in my
school. Somtimes they could be very cruel.
My best friend in grade school was Stella and she was a beatiful girl
inside and out. But she had a speech defect, a cleft palate. And many of our
classmates laughed at her behind her back and excluded her from their
games.
Kids havent changed much. When I give talks for colleges and young
peoples groups, the discussion often turns to popularity. Everyone wants to
be liked. Occasionally students tell me stories
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about how some girl has a minor physical defect, say, a crossed eye or a
nervous twitch. They say some kids laugh and make fun of her. Or a boy
has a limp so no one chooses him for their baseball team. Even if he can run
just as fast as the other kids, some of his classmates dont like the image of a
cripple being on their side.
The years go by and kids become adults. Not too much changes. Adults
are not as cruel, happily, about physical disabilties. But they can be brutal
about social disabilities. Social diabilities are insidious because often we
dont recognize them in ourselves. We can be blind to our social handicaps
and deaf to our verbal deficiencies. But were quick to recognize them in
others.
How many times has one of your associates made a dumb, insensitive
gaffe? How often have you written somebody off because of some stupid
move? Do you think he knew what he was doing? Of course not. He had no
idea he was crossing a line or stepping on your toes. Probably no one ever
told him about the subtleties were going to discuss in this final section of
How to Talk to Anyone.