Tyler is smart. He is unbelievably smart. I knew he was bored in school when he was younger. He was in advanced classes, and his teachers wanted to put him in the gifted program. He passed that test with flying colors in third grade. He excelled in school for the next few years. He thought he would enter high school early, but I was hesitant. Tyler was mature for his age, but I didn't want to open him up to the cruelty of high schoolers until I was sure he could handle it. I should have known better, since this reminds me of a story.....
"It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside" - Ty was in 2nd grade and we had just moved from Vancouver, WA to a little tiny hick town called Jerome, Idaho. The schools were fantastic, but the kids were redneck. The families in that area of Idaho were either Mormon or farmers, or Mormon farmers. We had nothing in common with them and stuck out like a sore thumb. Tyler had pierced ears at the time, and he wore size 6 gauge silver hoops in them. It's what he wanted and I didn't have a problem with that. He told me he wanted to cut his hair into a mohawk. "Ok," I said, "if this is what you want to do. If you hate it, we will just cut it off." He had this raging, sick mohawk from the front all the way back, and the side were completely cut down. It stuck up about 2-3 inches. Along with his earrings, nice tan and piercing blue eyes, he looked completely badass!!!
But remember, Tyler is only in 2nd grade - that's like 8 years old. He went to school and these redneck boys started calling him faggot and gay. They told him they would rip out his earrings and shove them you-know-where. When Tyler told me these things, I said we could take his earrings out and cut his hair - it's no big deal. He said, "No Mom. It doesn't bother me. They are just a bunch of redneck kids. This is what I want to look like." I thought, okay, if he can handle it, then let's leave it alone. My kid had style! Plus he knew that no one would mess with an 8-year-old with a mohawk. haha
You must understand that I have taught my children from the youngest age that it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, but it's what's on the inside that matters. I don't care if they have piercings or weird colorful haircuts. That stuff is temporary. As long as they are beautiful on the inside, if someone doesn't like the outside, it is their problem. Seemed like my parenting was working!So Ty has always been very mature for his age - an 'old soul' if you will. After moving to Las Vegas a few months after the mohawk/earring incidents, and a few years of the gifted program, I found out about an aerospace and engineering magnet school. Tyler was very excited about it when I told him he had the possibility of getting in. We went and visited the school. It was in North Las[quote style="boxed" float="right"] He was the object of racism every single day[/quote] Vegas, which is the absolute ghetto. It was literally a few blocks north of the Stratosphere hotel. If you have ever been to Vegas, you know that you don't walk around at night in that area. So the school is predominantly black and Mexican. By predominantly, I mean there were about 10 white kids in the entire junior high. The property was completely surround by a high chain-link fence with chicken wire on the top of it. Whoa. We took a tour of the program, and it was amazing!! The kids would get to go on amazing field trips including a zero-gravity flight, a trip down to NASA, and Ty would have his pilot's license by the time he graduated high school; all because he is smart. He was beyond excited. We were apprehensive about the location, but Tyler wasn't worried. He never had problems making friends, and he could get along with anyone. We signed the binding one-year contract, and my 11-year-old son Tyler was accepted into 1 of the 7 NASA schools in the United States.
To say it was a shock is an understatement. The first day, Tyler got his lunch and sat down in the cafeteria. A black girl walked up to him and said, "what do you think you are doing sitting here Cracker". When I asked him what he replied, he said, "I moved." Whoa, what? This doesn't sound like the Tyler I know. When I asked him why, he responded, "You don't talk back to black people, Mom." OMG. This, coming from my son, who stands up for what he believes in, and doesn't take any crap? His two best friends are black! Unfortunately, this was only the beginning.
He made friends with kids in his classes, who just so happened to be the only white kids in the school. One of them was unlucky enough to live a block away from the school, so of course there was no bus service for him. He had to get rides to and from school everyday because if he walked, he would get jumped. The blacks and the Mexicans hated each other, and the white kids were stuck in the middle. So Tyler kept his head down and finished out his year-long contract, and he was outta there. It's such a shame. Turns out Las Vegas takes Magnet school programs and puts them in ghetto schools so they would get more funding, and raise their test scores. What a failure of the system, and an extreme disappointment to my son. He was the object of racism every single day he went to Jim Thorpe Junior High. He learned firsthand what hatred was, and there's wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, and believe me, I tried.
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