2023-07-12 08:10:47
I have to remember not to tell the truth all the time. When I rode my bike through the green pedestrian traffic light because I was far and wide alone, two neon yellow bicycle police officers in safety gear came around the corner and caught me. I gave honest information about how I behave every day on my bike in this city for 40 years. Accident-free, careful and relatively lame. But that was the wrong text. I had to pay a fine, and after the two had left with their bikes, which effortlessly went three times faster than my rickety carrot, I thought: well, that’s right, and maybe at least new bike paths will be built with the money.
But when I saw the bike cops today as I turned off the bike path to my front door, ten meters across the wide empty sidewalk, I didn’t slouch. They saw me before I jumped off the bike and waved me over. An irritated woman who didn’t speak German just paid 25 euros and asked in English why the police officers were allowed to drive on the sidewalk but they weren’t.
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Exception, the man in uniform said while typing around on his card payment machine. When it was my turn to be lectured, I humbly listened to everything, pretending I’d never ridden the sidewalk in my life, like it was a huge exception, terribly sorry, like I’d accidentally been in my thoughts, which would definitely never happen again. I swore road safety was extremely important to me and I’d be glad my kids didn’t see my wrongdoing when I’ve been teaching them not to drive on the sidewalk for 20 years!
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I was rewarded by the cop for my super bluff
I had told eight blatant lies and was rewarded by the cop for my super bluff. But next time I’d have to pay a fine, his index finger, which was wiggling out of a padded cycling glove, told me. I was proud of my swindle and thought as I drove away: Ha, I don’t give a damn! He can toot me on the tuffel.
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And then I thought of Rammstein and the young women who made the mistake of finding something that was presented as cool on an international scale really cool. After the trap had snapped shut, they knew: Don’t tell the truth! Anyone who tells the truth, which may contain their own “error”, will be punished. That’s what they learned in school: If you make mistakes, you’re kicked out. And so, fear of making mistakes makes big mistakes possible.
When in doubt, lying is the safer option. The truth will get you in the devil’s kitchen. And if, as in the case of Rammstein, you’ve already seen Teufel’s kitchen from the inside, then you’ve also learned to be afraid. It’s not made with love.
Getting help was never a solution in children’s minds
If something can easily go wrong for so long, there must be more than one reason. Money is perhaps the most serious thing that unleashed the star macho so fatally and secured his environment.
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To be on the safe side, I didn’t teach my children to obey all traffic rules as a matter of principle. Always think for yourself first, even if we generally think traffic rules are great. They should be able to speak the truth fearlessly even when they have made mistakes. Remembering to reward the truth for every mundane detail will not help against abuse, but it will make it more difficult. I am sure about that. My mother was abused by her parents as a child and maybe that’s why I later got this job. For ten years I trained self-defense with children in elementary schools to prevent abuse. We sat in a circle on the floor in the classroom, talking about everyday situations, breaking rules and disobedience to adults. “Do you think that the children who had bad experiences had an uncomfortable feeling beforehand?”
Clear! Everyone agreed on that. “Do we have to come along immediately if someone claims that we forgot an important letter at school, even if it seems strange to us?” Usually the children in the role play came up with smarter solutions than my lesson plan. “I just say, ‘Get the letter, I’ll wait here’. Then I’ll leave quickly.” The only solution in the children’s minds was never to get help. I tried unsuccessfully to drum it into them again and again.
The abuse of physically weaker people is always possible
As we tried out a few fighting techniques and found out that the only way to get out of a “headlock” was to turn towards the body, not away from it, one child excitedly cried out, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee As with the milk pot! You have to go there too!”
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milk pot? “Well, if it boils over!” Go there, turn off the stove, even though it’s hissing and splashing, the child knew. It’s better to get help, says the educational specialist. But in an emergency, children decide for themselves. After all, there is always the possibility of it being your own fault. And nobody wants to be to blame, never!
Later, when I also trained women, at the end of each lesson there was the frustrating fact that with immense effort, very little can ultimately be prevented. Empowering victims is not half the solution, but a minimal fraction. The other side is too powerful and the abuse of physically weaker people is always possible. At some point I no longer wanted to encourage women to work on themselves without men being asked to do the same. I no longer wanted to teach them tips and tricks to use confusion tactics to escape men who go too far.
Training men would not be the whole solution
But training men would not be the whole solution. It needs a third authority that keeps an eye on it and maybe implements such good ideas as filling Row Zero only with women the age of the band members.
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But sometimes even that doesn’t help. For example, recently I sat at a beer garden table with Alice Schwarzer, because something like that can actually happen in Berlin after a vernissage. Between me and the black man sat an old man who took my search for my second shoe under the table as an invitation to grope my bare calf. What else is supposed to help if it doesn’t even help to sit right next to the black one?
Establishing a better error culture in our society is also a necessary measure, instead of just dividing into guilty and not guilty. I want to be able to be guilty too. Once I was so happy about a new bike path that the wind had to dry a tear of happiness. But I still drive on sidewalks all the time because the city is still developed for cars. I have to tell that to the next best bicycle policeman right away.
#told #police #blatant #lies