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Safe is a relative term...
Feb. 6th, 2004 03:22 pmSafe from what? When? Where?
Ordinary kids, kids like the girls I go to ballet class with, are safe from having the army storm into their home, are (in general) safe from their neighbors and classmates. They're safe from the knowledge that half a dozen governments or other organizations would kill to get a hold of them and use them or experiment on them, and are safe from having to worry that tomorrow they'll wake up and they'll be different. They won't wake up one morning and find that they've fallen through the floor and can't touch anything because they don't know _how_ to be solid anymore.
But there are things they're not safe from. They're not safe from a random attacker on the street - can't phase or fly away, throw them off with super strength, etc. They're not safe from school shootings and muggings in the street. Children go missing in this country, in this state, every day, and some of them are never found again, because they don't have the abilities some of us have.
Here, we're safe from some things, and not safe from other things. Back home I was safe from having the millitary charge in my front door, but I wasn't safe from having my neighbors go after me if they ever found out what I was.
So I came here. Here, no one looks at me askance because I can walk through walls. I traded the safety of being invisible to the larger world (governments, etc) for being safe from the hostility of friends and neighbors and strangers on the street.
And no, before you ask, I didn't know that in advance. When I came to Xavier's, none of this had happened before. Which just means I've gotten to live through _all_ of the things which have happened since. And if given the chance to go back and choose again, knowing all of that, I'd still come here.
I'd rather know that Piotr is here to help us the way he did the first time, that John and Bobby and Marie are here to help us and each other, even that I'm here for 'Yana and Miles, than not have them. Than have to worry that some day someone would come after me and I wouldn't have friends to depend on, to help me and for me to help, because no one knows that I'm a mutant, or because they know and it makes them hate me.
So fine, I didn't know before, and once I did know I had to make a choice - do I stay or do I go. I made my choice, and I don't regret it.
But then, maybe I am getting jaded about having people shoot at me and hate me for being who and what I am. Sixty years ago in Germany they'd have put me to death for my religion, and a hundred and fourty years ago I'd have been told that being educated was worthless because of my sex. People are very good at hating other people for whatever reasons they can come up with, and I still think Jamie's plan for getting them to hate us less is a good one.
Ordinary kids, kids like the girls I go to ballet class with, are safe from having the army storm into their home, are (in general) safe from their neighbors and classmates. They're safe from the knowledge that half a dozen governments or other organizations would kill to get a hold of them and use them or experiment on them, and are safe from having to worry that tomorrow they'll wake up and they'll be different. They won't wake up one morning and find that they've fallen through the floor and can't touch anything because they don't know _how_ to be solid anymore.
But there are things they're not safe from. They're not safe from a random attacker on the street - can't phase or fly away, throw them off with super strength, etc. They're not safe from school shootings and muggings in the street. Children go missing in this country, in this state, every day, and some of them are never found again, because they don't have the abilities some of us have.
Here, we're safe from some things, and not safe from other things. Back home I was safe from having the millitary charge in my front door, but I wasn't safe from having my neighbors go after me if they ever found out what I was.
So I came here. Here, no one looks at me askance because I can walk through walls. I traded the safety of being invisible to the larger world (governments, etc) for being safe from the hostility of friends and neighbors and strangers on the street.
And no, before you ask, I didn't know that in advance. When I came to Xavier's, none of this had happened before. Which just means I've gotten to live through _all_ of the things which have happened since. And if given the chance to go back and choose again, knowing all of that, I'd still come here.
I'd rather know that Piotr is here to help us the way he did the first time, that John and Bobby and Marie are here to help us and each other, even that I'm here for 'Yana and Miles, than not have them. Than have to worry that some day someone would come after me and I wouldn't have friends to depend on, to help me and for me to help, because no one knows that I'm a mutant, or because they know and it makes them hate me.
So fine, I didn't know before, and once I did know I had to make a choice - do I stay or do I go. I made my choice, and I don't regret it.
But then, maybe I am getting jaded about having people shoot at me and hate me for being who and what I am. Sixty years ago in Germany they'd have put me to death for my religion, and a hundred and fourty years ago I'd have been told that being educated was worthless because of my sex. People are very good at hating other people for whatever reasons they can come up with, and I still think Jamie's plan for getting them to hate us less is a good one.
