As of right now, my new YouTube
video is now making its way across the nation via passionate people posting it
on their Facebook pages and e-mailing it like wildfire. To those people, I offer my lifelong
and most sincere appreciation. If
this video goes viral then it will be because of YOU and not just my public
oration skills. I am also blessed
to have the ability to work with a loyal publicist named, Victor Gulotta. Mr. Gulotta is generously donating his
services to my campaign long after his contractual obligations have expired. He is just one of many neurotypical
(non-autistic) individuals who have made a profound difference in my life by
believing in my efforts. The link
of my YouTube video is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDBjMW35wX8 or you may just type in Jesse
Saperstein on the YouTube search engine.
A photo of me wearing a court jester hat will immediately show up!
“We need to dwell on the horror
of the past only to ensure the present will be a gift.” On a less poetic note, I have never
believed in letting anything go. I
believe in going back whether it is a day or fourteen years later to fix
something that is probably still broken.
The date of Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 lingers in my mind as a day of
catharsis. I chose to return to my
old middle school where I attended from 1994 to 1996. It is the same edifice that housed demons from the past, but
it would not be fair to displace those demons upon these new, innocent
students. They had nothing to do
with that ancient torment in my life, but I must assume the bullying from the
distant past still lingers within these new human shells. The mission of my speech is to
eradicate it like a forest ranger stamping out a dying campfire.
It definitely helped that I am
friends with the new Arlington Middle school principal who has always believed
in my endeavors. Rich Carroll who
is as committed toward fighting bullying as any administrator I have ever met
before in my life. He understood
the video had to be filmed in a timely fashion and worked diligently with me to
make the arrangements. If Mr.
Carroll has been my principal in those difficult days of yore then perhaps my
time at Arlington Middle School would have been different. Or maybe not. Back then, I do not believe administrators knew the true
deadliness of bullying especially since the nightmare of cyber bullying barely
even existed. Bullying was still
seen as a right of passage. I look
back on those days and sometimes wonder whether my torment would have been
dramatically alleviated if I had punched one of my classmates in the nose as
hard as possible. A weight would
have been lifted as I watched blood spew from that orifice and braced for a
much worse beating. But the
bruises would have healed with minimal emotional scars. I could have won or lost, but it could
have ended because most bullies are cowards. They will not usually target someone if they know that
individual will strike back with brute force. I believe in diplomacy, but it often failed miserably in
those days. This is the beauty of
this day and age. We take torment
seriously and it is not necessary for violence to beget violence.
Mr. Carroll and I had faith in
the students of Arlington Middle School from the very beginning and exercised
only a modicum of caution. For
example, Mr. Carroll suggested I not tell the students my speech would be on
YouTube for fear that one of the students would seize the moment to get his
fifteen minutes of fame. For some
reason, the Internet provokes people to act as a “Snookie-like clown.” I probably misspelled her name, but who
cares.
My expectations were high for
middle school students at eight o’clock in the morning the last day before
Thanksgiving. But the students
certainly rose to the occasion and I am proud of them! They ended my presentation with a
climactic standing ovation and were not the same faces that would have been
staring back at me fourteen years ago.
Their enthusiasm will now be broadcast around the nation and will set an
example. I am confident the
admiration they extended toward me will be delegated toward the Jesse Andrew
Saperstein’s of present times…
No comments:
Post a Comment