Mean

College football is part of my life.  I attended a rocking-good SEC school and married a fan of football.  It was not novel to go to a game this weekend.  The new part was my kids.  Three young people that I love perched in the stands, faces painted with team insignia, sweatshirts proffering school support, noses pink from the cold air, pompoms clutched in fists, eyes wide to flashing lights and throngs of people.  All was well until a pair of unruly fans took seats to our left.   They brought a rude,  crude-mouthed element to the game as they chose to berate folks rooting for the opposition scattered among us home-team supporters.  Those two fans were mean.

The adjective mean is defined at dictionary.com as follows.
                1.  offensive, selfish, or unaccommodating; nasty; malicious
                2.  small-minded or ignoble
                3.  penurious, stingy, or miserly
                4.  inferior in grade, quality, or character
                5.  low in status, rank or dignity

Mean was already on my mind because I attended an education conference only the day before where we heard a heartrending presentation from a woman who had been bullied in school.  My mind was flooded with emotions during her moving talk.  I also had questions.  “How did those children who abused her at school get so mean?  What could possibly make them act so nasty and malicious?  I could scarcely believe any young humans could be capable of such constant harassment.  One might occasionally make a hurtful action in poor judgment but these kids were relentless and deliberate.

Nowhere in the definition is any indication of mean being synonymous with superior.  Quite the contrary, inferior is listed.  Yet supremacy is what appears to be in the minds of persons acting offensively.  How do people come to think that treating others poorly elevates them in power?  How does such lack of empathy exist?  I find it implausible that mean is something a person is born with. 

Is it because in many movies and television shows, often those aimed at kids, the mean girl or boy is rich, fabulous looking and popular?  Is it because magazines offer hateful things:  Whose big butt is this?  Who is getting a sordid divorce?  Who looks better in this dress?  Who flopped in an interview?  Is it because young people see adults acting heartlessly toward others?  Are we so base a culture we willingly create and consume mean over and over?  Are we promoting cruel teasing, extreme pranking, and embarrassing, berating, gossiping behavior as cool and fun - perhaps even a way to fit in with others?  If we step outside of ourselves to watch what we are doing would we be proud?  I think some mean behavior may be because people are moving without attention.

Fortunately the noise kept my youngest from learning new vocabulary in the stands and my older children recognized the small-mindedness and could process a blip in our family fun in a later conversation.  We concluded life is better when people are not mean.