Smile, you've just been tagged!

How far can a random, small compliment go?

In our society, we've been taught to stay under certain norms. For example - greet your acquaintances, but stay away from strangers.

A slight deviation away from any of the hundreds of norms we've learned can result in ridicule, isolation, or just some weird looks. Yeah, not something you'd really want to do. You would you have to put yourself in a vulnerable position, which is something that most people would try to avoid. Why stick out of the crowd when you could avoid all the unnecessary attention? 

People should actually be asking themselves, why not? What if you deviated away from a norm in a good way? Sure, you'd get some weird looks, but instead of ridicule or isolation, you would receive praise. 

An event started in my school involving these small notecards... On the front they say, "SMILE, You've just been tagged with a random act of kindness! :)" The mission of these notecards is to spread "Random Acts of Kindness" throughout the school. 

However, these cards have to have a starting point... And that's where I wanted to help. My friend, the president of NHS at my school, picks up a bunch of these cards from the Student Activities office every day. For 5 days in a row, I asked her for more cards everyday so that I could help spread them around.

Normally, students would only give these cards to people they are well-acquainted with. After all, it would make you feel uncomfortable doing a Random Act of  Kindness to some random kid. However, there's an issue with this. If you only pass these Smile cards to you friends, and your friends pass them onto their friends, the cards wouldn't get too far. Most of them would just stay within your circle of friends. 

I decided to go around during lunch and passing periods and distribute the cards to random students. Whenever I handed someone a card, I would give them a compliment... "Your hair looks nice," "You look like a smart person," "You seem like a pretty cool person," etc.

The reactions were great. I got a lot of weird looks.. along with a lot of Thank Yous and laughs also. My favorite reaction was when someone came after me to give it back because they didn't want to carry around the card. As he handed the card back to me, he told me that I was a good person. I could tell he just said that because he didn't know what else to say, but at the moment, I actually did feel like a pretty good person. 

I ended up passing out 40-50 cards, with around half of the recipients being strangers. 

One random compliment can reach out to many, many people.... One smile at a time.

Gender Roles

What makes a boy different from a girl? Too many things to count. It would be harder to find things that are similar between the two! Gender roles in modern day society are extremely strict. Now that I've put some thought into it, there have been a lot of social pressures that have helped form my personality (...or perhaps they've hurt my personality). Every boy wants to be the tough hero that saves the girl in the movies. If I took even one step out of the "box of masculinity," I would probably find myself to be an object of ridicule. For example, a boy from my school decided to try something new his junior year. Instead of taking Fitness or Cardio to fill his P.E. requirement, he took Dance. On the first day of class, he was instantly labeled as homosexual by the rest of the class, who were all females. According to him, they were even changing out in the open in front of him, until one of the girls (who knew the guy) told everyone else that he was completely heterosexual. Social norms caused the girls in the class to quickly assume his sexuality.

Similarly, a discussion came up about whether or not you would let your son wear a dress. I am actually completely against it. As a male that experienced a significant amount of bullying in elementary school, I don't think it would be a good idea. If my child would continue to wear dresses going to school, he would, without a doubt, be teased. Even if he wanted to wear a dress, I would firmly state that dresses are for females only and that he shouldn't be wearing them. I think teaching my son the normal way to dress (according to society) is important. The boy from the TV show we watched in class was defended, but he and his parents also got a lot of attention from the media. Would you want to be put on TV with your child to be judged by the rest of the nation? I sure wouldn't.