Last Sunday was the long awaited Interact Bon(d)fire. Kim, Joanne, Theo, and I arrived there at 8:30 AM and because it was cloudy, glum, and a bit sprinkling, there was literally nobody else at the beach except one other group that was saving their fire pit. I had slept at 4 in the morning due to (procrastinating on) working on the posters for the bonfire that would let people know where we were. THE JOY of being the publicity director! I love it.
Anyway, we were able to save two fire pits since around 60 people were supposed to come to this event. The West High Interact board finally got everything situated by 2pm: the two EZ-up tents, the table, the food, the drinks, the trash bags, the firewood, the getting-sand-out-of-the-pits dirty ordeal. It was incredibly exhausting actually.. And Dockweiler is so dirty! So so dirty because of the ashes that mix with the sand. I hate Dockweiler. I hate birds. I hate seagulls! I hate beach bathrooms, too. So sick.
It was around 4pm (when people were supposed to start arriving) when they came. The ignorant, disrespectful bullies. When Joanne, Nicole, Jenna, and I came back from the Dockweiler beach entrance to put up the beautiful posters that I made that morning, we saw basically the entire Interact board posse at our 2nd reserved pit arguing with a huge group of Mexican people. Someone informed us that they were trying to take our pit since nobody was actually at the pit even though our stuff was all near it. Even though basically everyone was at the 2nd pit arguing with the huge scary people, I just.. stayed where I felt safer. Yeah. But when I did walk over, I heard Julie and Joanne arguing like crazy, saw the rude people putting their own wood into the pit that we labored for an hour over trying to get all the sand, coal, glass, and nails out. Since they were the adults, and we were the teenagers, they basically bullied us because they knew we were incapable of really doing anything to them.
You know what, long story short: bullies came, took our pit, angered Interacters, Interacters& Katie Horton's mother& a Rotarian who was supervising this event were mad determined to get back at them, seriously called the cops, cops drove in their SUV to come talk to both our groups separately, two of the bullies started walking toward us, cops stopped them, had a discussion in between the two pits, cops sided with us (since we were honestly here until the early morning trying to reserve two pits for a reason), bullies were >:|, they moved, we got both pits, some people felt bad for them, and that was the end of that.
I asked my mom after that crazy dramatic ordeal if she would've moved if we told her and her adult friends if she was in the bullies' situation. She said yes. OF COURSE, RIGHT? HONESTLY, who freaking wouldn't? Yeah, there were no other fire pits, but would anyone honestly start cursing at us, putting their own wood into the pit disrespectfully, and ignoring us and completely zoning us out? Oh, why I outta... Sigh, and I feel that if they were a different race, things might have been different.
I mean, not at the actual things that went down. But I feel a little uncomfortable telling the story because I'd have to say "these Mexicans blah blah blahed." Or I wouldn't have to say "these Mexican people" per se, but I feel like just saying "these people blah blah blahed" doesn't tell the entire story? As if telling the race makes people view things differently? But.. I always feel that some people may take it as some racist statement when talking about what Mexicans or black people did. It just sounds insulting for some reason. And I feel like people would envision things differently if they heard what the Mexican people did as to how they might view things if they heard a group of white people had done what they did to us. If you get what I mean.. What a complicated situation to describe. But I guess it's only complicated because I don't want to sound racist..
Ah, the next post will be happier.
No comments:
Post a Comment