Somebody thinks I'm a lefty!

I haven't posted in... gosh, apparently two years, I see now, because I've been working on other writing projects (which might or might not ever come to fruition), but today the weirdest thing happened.

I was reading a post on PJMedia about a daycare worker in Michigan who caused the shutdown of the facility where she worked by stabbing a couple of children with thumbtacks. The description of what she did makes it sound as if she did it not because of anything the children did - she didn't get mad at them and come at them with tiny little shivs, which would be awful enough - but rather just to hurt them. Commenters on the story immediately went to race as her reason. She could be of a different race from the children she hurt, or their parents; but she could also be of a different socioeconomic class from them, and that could be what put her over the edge into criminality and cruelty.

I used to direct a preschool, so I have a little background in this area. It happens that there was no socioeconomic divide between the staff I had and the families we served - but preschool workers don't make a lot of money, and it might be easy - apparently was easy for a few of our parents, at first - to believe that the difference between what the preschool teachers and aides made and what they, the parents, made was indicative of their relative worth. So it wasn't hard for me to imagine that such a divide, which certainly does exist in many preschools, and I'm guessing even more in straight daycares, could have pertained to this now-shuttered daycare. And it wasn't too hard for me to imagine that a worker, perhaps already coming in disgruntled by a feeling that she wasn't "appreciated" enough, could have been dissed by a parent and decide to take out her aggrievedness (I may just be coining that word) on the child, regardless of her race or the child's.

So I commented thusly. And the weird thing was that two people immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was defending the worker despite my repeated statements that there was no excuse for what she'd done, and one concluded that I'm a lefty! I love it!

The first commenter said, "You're full of yourself, and it shows. Your reference to 'typical imperious parent' shows your baked-in sense of self importance, mixed with a touch of pseudo-intellectual bigotry. I'm certain you were happy to take their money." I might've deserved that; what I'd written originally was,

And I still spent an inordinate amount of time emphasizing (subtly) to parents that their appropriate mode of interaction should be to look teachers and aides in the eye, get to know them, and treat them with basic respect - after all, we were going to know their child intimately. It wasn't common, in our school, but it did happen from time to time that we'd get other schools' (or, more likely, other daycares') typical imperious parent who hands off his or her child silently, scrolling on the ubiquitous cellphone, as if the person taking charge of that child for the next several hours and giving that child interesting things to do instead of parking him in front of a screen isn't even worthy of a glance or a response to her friendly and direct greeting.

...and a bunch more. So yes, I was speaking from my own perceived position of experiential "authority," and I did come across as pretty lah-di-dah. So I answered that first commenter,

Sorry for how I came off, IC - I should have said "typical" (with quotes) instead. I was one of those parents before I was a preschool director. With my oldest child, I was very caught up in my own worries - hadn't wanted to put the kid into daycare but I had to work while my husband was in school - and I can't for the life of me remember the name of my child's primary teacher/caregiver; I don't think I ever paid her more attention than the bare minimum needed to be sure that my son was actually transferred into her care.

What I was trying to do, I'll say again, was to use my personal experience to highlight a situation that I know does pertain at times in daycares and preschools, as well as among a lot of us, including me, who mindlessly accept service from others.

Et cetera.

The second commenter stuck with it for quite a while. His first comment:

Typical lefty snob from the education/indoctrination collective, the type of clown that has given us morons like AOC. You work for the parents missy, you pompous twit. What an insufferable POS you are. A Masters in Early Childhood Education? Hilarious, do they get better pay for working in the drive-thru?

Oh, if he only knew. Of course, the one undeniable charge he eventually leveled was that I'm long-winded... Here's the whole string.