Our Side of the Tracks

Photo By LECB Designs

I was born on the 'right side of the tracks' so to speak. When I started to go to school I learned how to treat people who lived on the 'wrong' side of the tracks. Rule # 1 said that you must not touch them because they had fleas. Rule # 2 said that if you spoke to them it had to be in a threatening tone of voice so that people did not think that you were their friend. Rule # 3 said that if you touched them or spoke to them you were infected and therefore subject to ridicule. You might say that this was the unwritten 'code' of conduct for our school. Retribution for infraction of the rules was swift and complete.

I was six years old when I was introduced to this primitive little ritual. I made the innocent mistake of talking to one of the girls from the 'wrong side' and I was immediately given the unexpected punishment; (no one had informed me of the code). Embarrassed but not broken, I tried to exonerate myself by denying association and quitting myself of the poor girl's presence. The rest of the day was spent not only avoiding her but everyone else who had seen me with her lest there be a repeat of the earlier punishment. Several children did find me and take up the chant against me, at which I could only turn away. As the day wore on my feelings began to change from embarrassment to frustration and finally to anger. Why, I thought, should I be punished for something I didn't even know about. It just didn't seem fair.

Walking home from school that day the burden of scorn rested heavy upon me. I felt sour and sullen. As I looked down the path toward my home I happened to catch sight of the girl whom I had earlier befriended, but who had been the unwitting cause of all my trouble. Suddenly it seemed to me that she was responsible for all that had happened to me. In anger I yelled some unkind insults and threatened her with bodily harm if she came near me again. She of course ran home crying.

I was hardly in the door when I heard the telephone ringing. Somehow I knew that it was going to be about me. When my mother hung up the phone she asked me to come into the kitchen with her. Already my head was hanging down and I began to feel remorse for what I had done. She must have sensed my feelings because she didn't scold me hard as I had expected. She merely took me by the hands and knelt me down in front of her chair. She asked me what I had done. I told her. She said that I must never again treat another human being that way. She said that we were all brothers and sisters of the same human family, and that it didn't matter if they were poor, ignorant, ugly, or unwanted, I should treat them as my brother.

I knew that she was right. I had known all along. But that day I made the most important decision of my young life: I decided that it was better to be embarrassed by all my classmates than to hurt another human being and to feel the shame of disappointing my mother. While I knelt by her chair she taught me a little bit about the family of the girl I had met at school. Her mother spoke no English, her father had passed away some years earlier, they were very poor and still had several children to care for and lived in a small run-down house on a tiny piece of land where the mother tried to grow food to feed her family. She needed a friend, not an enemy.

After my apology to the girl we became dear friends. When the other children saw that I was going to be her friend no matter what, they stopped making fun of me and even stopped teasing her as well. To turn her world around I just had to stand on her side of the tracks for a while.

There are a lot of tracks that divide people. Some people are on one side, some on the other. But if there is one thing I have learned the hard way it is that the tracks work both ways. You may think you were born on the 'right' side, but from where someone else is standing, it looks like the 'wrong' side. When you find yourself on the wrong side of someone else's tracks, life isn't good anymore. I think that what my mom was trying to tell me is that the tracks that divide people are not so important. People are important no matter where they stand in relation to the tracks.