Intent

Adults joke around and tease as a normal part of communication. Beernut, however, misses a lot of it because he is just so literal.

Beernut stubbed his toe on Tuesday morning on the way to breakfast. One of the staff said “hey, we could just cut off your toe and then it won’t hurt. In fact, we could cut the whole foot off and then you NEVER have to worry about stubbed toes.”

Beernut just stared at him and blinked a few times. As if he recognized that there was something he wasn’t quite understanding.

And then there was a flash of pink as Poppyseed shot past me.

“HEY! Stop teasing my brother!” she shouted. “It’s not nice to tease people. When people tease me it really hurts my feelings!”

“Cut it out, Poppyseed,” mumbled Beernut, “it’s ok.”

“NO, it is NOT ok. It is never OK to tease!” she repied.

Yes, Beernut needs to learn that teasing is often good-natured. But Poppyseed wasn’t wrong. Teasing more often leads to hurt feelings. And in this age of e-communication, tone of voice, facial expressions, and other non-verbal forms of communication are removed. Making it even harder to distinguish between good-natured teasing and hurtful teasing.

Poor Poppyseed was subjected to a sermon at lunch about the difference between teasing and sarcasm. But I think that the teacher would have been better served being the student and learning from the child.