No, they’re not. Wait, some of them are. It’s okay to break the rule about not ending your sentences with a preposition. It’s okay to shatter the rule about how a best friend keeps all your secrets, IF your best friend’s secret is that she’s getting hurt by someone. It’s certainly okay to break the rule about how children should be seen and not heard.
That one’s really important because sometimes it’s the children who have the really important things to say.
I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant all alone last week, enjoying the quiet that comes from having the nachos all to myself. The waiters came by and pushed several of the tables across from mine into a straight row to accommodate a big group they were expecting. I wasn’t thrilled with the invasion of my nachoey goodness-induced bliss, but then a group of kids from the high school sat down at the tables and I quickly figured out what this was: it was a pity party.
One of the members of the group had just been dumped, and apparently, dumped in the ugliest of ways. The rest of the ten or so kids at the table were there to help the relationship victim over the pain by consuming large quantities of their own nachos. I even began to worry that there might be a nacho shortage, but I decided that I would sacrifice any future refills of nachos for the cause.
Here’s the great part about rule breaking: the lovelorn victim at the table was a cute guy, who had just been dumped by his boyfriend.
I can’t even describe how amazed I was that all these kids, both guys and girls, came together to just be with their friend when he was at his most sad. It was a rule-break of galactic proportions, because when I was their age, nobody EVER would have done it. The guy wouldn’t have even told his friends he was dating someone and he certainly wouldn’t have shared if they had broken up. More importantly, those kids at the table wouldn’t have been caught dead in public at a nacho party to help a gay friend feel better because of the very real threat of hatred from outsiders. It was a very dark time.
Sometimes the rules are meant to be broken because the rules are stupid and they don’t make sense. Hurting is hurting, no matter who it is or who they are. Those kids at the nacho-party (let’s see how many times I can squeeze the word “nacho” into this post) are literally changing the world with their Nachos of Tolerance and I’m so proud of them that it hurts. The only way anything will ever change is if people are brave enough to break the rules that need breaking.
