What I wish I could say to my teenage self

I have a lot of regrets from high school and some of them cause me to wake up in the middle of the night. And some of them I will regret forever and this is one of them...

What I wish I could tell my teenage self...

Sexual harassment from teachers is never okay...
Teachers should never touch students of the opposite sex...in any way.
And teachers should not be touched by their students.
Teachers should never flirt with their students...know what flirting is.
What you wear should never determine your grade.
Don't be scared of your peers.. do the right thing.
If you see someone being sexually harassed, you should tell someone.  Pick the right someone...
Sexual harassment is never okay...


20 years later and I talk to a teenager about something their teacher said. I respond with "That is not acceptable".  The teenager rolls her eyes.  I want to cry. Don't let grown men get away with this crap!

20 years later.. I am mad and ashamed that I did not say something.  Was any physical harm done during my teenage years? Maybe..maybe not.  I hope not. What if my saying something when I should have said something could have prevented an actual sexual assault?  I will never know. And I am thankful for that. I already have enough regret...

I did speak up..once.  I got severely reprimanded..practically yelled at..that I shouldn't make such accusations lightly.  I never spoke of it again.. until now.

And honestly, I can still see some of my peers at 38 year olds rolling their eyes at me. It's okay.  I get that to you it might have seemed harmless at the time and maybe it is still harmless to you but it's not to me.

And now I am a parent.  And that changes perspective on everything. I don't have a daughter but if I did, the thought of a an adult man rubbing her shoulders.  The thought that she got the grade she did because she rolled up her skirt a little higher and the man swiped his finger across her knee while she went by.  The thought of grown men and their leering eyes..looking at my daughter.. makes me want to THROW UP  and I don't even have a daughter.  And the above are all true stories but I am not the "she" in all of them and not all of them happened at my school.  But they did happen when I was a teenager.

And I said nothing. And I wish I could change that.  Because all of those men should have been fired. And they weren't. Because no one said anything because none of us cared enough to do the right thing. Or we ignored it. Or we were ignorant that it was even wrong. I don't know...

I don't even know how I would broach this subject with my children. They are too young now. But one day, I will send them off to school and we will have a talk and they will know. And they will know that they can talk to me.  And if they ever see these actions to themselves or to a fellow classmate, I hope they will talk to me.

I wish I had...


Note:  I did not mention the name of my high school in this post. Please do not mention it here or on FB as it doesn't really matter at this point. The stories and people I refer to are long gone. I have no desire to talk about specific stories or  specific men 20 years later.