The weight of a word

Today, as part of the OCFF outreach program "Artbeat," I did a songwriter's workshop with Raghu Lokanathan in a local Kingston high school.

The workshop went really well - the kids were attentive and interested, both Raghu enjoyed the experience immensely. But little did we know we'd narrowly avoided disaster, until we were chatting after lunch in the student-run cafeteria with one of the teachers.

I had introduced a song I wrote for the ukulele the way I often do: as a "goofy little ditty." Nobody blinked as I explained that's what I call the silly songs that come out on my beloved "world's cutest instrument." We later learned, though, that the students had shown incredible restraint at that moment.

What we didn't know at the time was that many of the students in that school come from prison families. Their moms basically have moved to Kingston so that the kids can be with their dads, who are in jail - some of them, pretty much forever. That's a sobering thought.

Apparently, in the parlance of prisoners and by extension their families, someone who is "goofy" is a child molester. It's not unusual for a fight to break out in class almost instantly if anyone uses that word in any context. I can only imagine the pain of hearing a word like that if it represented everything that was awful and ugly and wrong in your life.

These kids were great. They listened, and I think they learned a lot from us. But it's nothing compared to what we learned. I feel pretty strongly that I'd better learn a whole lot more.