In Line with the Crowd

At my elementary school boys and girls in the upper grades were segregated into different play areas. The boys were allowed into the girls’ yard—shared by all girls grades 4 through 8—because that’s where the drinking fountain was. Girls, however, did not dare set foot into any of the boys’ yards—and every two grades of the boys got their own yard. (In the fourth grade when I asked why the boys got half a yard and a lot of sports equipment while all we girls got was one foursquare and one slightly deflated ball, I was told it was because they were boys. Somehow that didn’t answer the question.)

Since all the kids used the one drinking fountain, the lines could be rather long. The fountain had three spigots, one on the left, one on the right, and one in the middle. But what may amaze you is that nobody, and I mean nobody, would drink out of the middle faucet. 

It didn’t matter if it was 120 degrees Fahrenheit and you were sweaty and dying of thirst. You got into one of those two lines that snaked back about 50 kids long and waited your turn, despite the fact that there was an unused faucet with no line at all.

I heard a couple of rumors why the middle faucet was taboo. One was that the water coming out of it was poisoned. Another was that someone had once thrown up on it.

Whatever the reason, anybody quenching his thirst out of the middle spigot immediately lost several highly prized social points—as I discovered one day when I’d had enough and dared to thwart convention. You’d think that faucet had liquid cooties. Cowed by the experience, the next day I was back in line with everyone else.

Pretty stupid, huh?

Yet how many adults act exactly like that when it comes to our modern society? Many don’t dare speak out against political correctness for fear of catching the equivalence of today’s social cooties: being labeled intolerant. Say fornication is a sin and you’re a prude. Upholding the teachings of the Catholic Church can brand you as hateful in any crowd. It’s amazing how one ad hominem can silence an opponent into embarrassment and shame.

But this works only if we care what others think of us, only if we are willing to fall in line, to be swept up in the stream of public opinion.

My older daughter, when bullied in class, came up with a terrific retort that silenced her scoffers. To their taunts she merely replied “So?”

Imagine if we used that simple word today:

You’re intolerant!!! “So?”

You’re a prude!!! “So?”

You’re full of hate!!! “So?”

Should we care what these adult bullies mistakenly think of us? Shouldn’t we care what God thinks of us?

G.K. Chesterton once said, “A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” Sometimes I’m tempted to drive past my old school during recess on a hot day and see if the students are still shunning the middle faucet of that drinking fountain.

I hope not. I hope they’ve learned to step out of line and go against the stream.