In my class we have a worm day. If they promise to be gentle and not tug, they can hold one of those beautiful squiggly caretakers of dirt. The wonder they have for it is so real - and I say, did you know they have 5 hearts and love you with all of them. Then I say, “are you holding a boy worm or a girl worm” and they guess. They are all right, and they are all wrong, because worms are both. And I say that. I say, “they are just like people; sometimes not a boy or a girl but something in between, or sometimes they’re both on different days. And they still love you with all 5 hearts.”
“Cool,” says one kid. “I don’t want to be a boy, I want to be a girl sometimes.” And I say okay.
Children are taught fear. They are taught that the worms are gross. It isn’t until they’re a few years older than my class - up in 3rd or 4th grade - that they start shrieking at my little worm friends. They won’t play the silly games or sing the silly songs or even promise not to tug. A fourth grader hears my lesson about gender and says, “That’s so weird,” and suddenly I hear from the mouths of these beautiful children, “Yeah,” “this is weird,” “No, mine is a girl.”
It is not the 4th grader I blame. It is the person in her life that saw something beautiful and ruined it for her. It is the “put that down, it’s gross,” “you don’t want to get dirty” “there’s us and there’s them.” I want to show her - without the humble little blind noses of worms, we are nothing. We need them. Did you know if they grow a belt they’re over a year old! Spent tunnelling through the secrets of roots. I want to show her: it’s okay if tomorrow you feel like a boy or maybe something neither, something different that is entirely you.
But fear, once discovered, is not an easy stain to get out. We say, “What will we tell the children” and forget - the children already heard. They heard you snickering about the person down the street. They saw you talking to your friend about “those people”. And they internalize it, burrow it into them. We don’t tell the children, we model hatred until the children can’t hear you, can’t hear you declare, “do as I say, not as I do.”
Later the 4th grader goes home. “Ugh,” her mother says with a shudder, seeing my box, “I hate worms.”
