TINY DANCER
Published in the Dec. 6, 2025 issue.
They arrived in twos and threes, carrying candles, somber, not knowing what to expect.
A candlelight vigil on Willow Street in Bishop for a 12-year-old girl who took her own life over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Pictures of the beautiful girl, whom her mother called “Tiny Dancer” projected on the outside of the apartment wall.
Pictures in cheer uniform.
Smiling pictures with family.
One picture of her as a toddler in a bouncy walker, her arms outstretched, wanting to be picked up and held.
And now, no more hugs.
The pictures (there were about 15) kept coming up in rotation. Candles being lit. An occasional person breaking out in sobs. Then quiet.
Mom spoke. In particular, what haunted me was where talking about how some other kids had started making fun her of her little girl’s teeth – so the little girl at one point had stopped smiling.
The run-through of the photos on the wall.
Indeed, every recent photo with lips pursed and closed.
But mom wasn’t there to point fingers or identify scapegoats. She was there to share her pain, and to urge her community to be better, to be more aware.
I don’t know how she got through her remarks. Or how she got through the past week. Or how she’s gonna get through the next week, or the next thousand weeks.
I had a text exchange the following day with Sheet board member Gary Katz, who hails from Tarrytown, New York. His observations bear repeating:
“Kids have always been cruel to each other. But they went to church and were taught that they had a better nature and that their mission in life was to choose good over evil, not just in the world but in their own hearts. This lesson used to be hammered home, AT home, by grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles who spent quantity and quality time with their families, and through communal institutions like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts where the ultimate ‘cool’ was to be the kid who helped an elderly person with their groceries and earn a badge for, wait for it, MERIT. Politicians who represented these values won a bully pulpit to project them louder when they championed them on the campaign trail.
*Think George H.W. Bush and his Thousand Points of Light
This was a powerful counterweight to the inherently dark and cruel sides of human nature, and on balance, tipped the scales of society as a whole well onto the side of striving to be good.
This is no small achievement. All it takes is one kind child to reach out to the victim of bullying and show some love and human concern, and the light of that small act can chase a roomful of darkness into the corners. When I was a kid, in every class of 20-25 kids there were always three or four, not just one, who were man (or woman) enough to step up and reach out to the kids who were bullied and save them from feeling terribly, terribly alone.
What do kids have today? Parents who don’t go to church or take their kids either. And then, half the ones who do go to church are preached a gospel of success that puts material gain as the key goal of humanity (in the place of moral improvement). Home lives where screen time is king for adults and kids alike rather than family time. A culture where the heroic role models, from SpongeBob to the Kardashians, are snarky and cruel to anyone who dares to be a detractor (indeed, detractors have been renamed as haters, as if anyone who disapproves of you is a mortal enemy deserving of destruction). A society where calling someone a “Boy Scout” is an insult instead of a compliment. Where articulating a belief in a higher power with a morality and objective sense of right and wrong is a sign of being a backward reactionary versus an enlightened liberal striving to make the world a better place. A country where voters crave political leaders who proudly demonize and retaliate against their ‘enemies’ and live lives where the ultimate good is defined by self aggrandizement and a moral code where only might makes right. A country where young ‘liberals’ literally cheer with religious fervor in favor of acts of murder (think Luigi Mangione).
In such a world, how do we expect even one child, let alone three or four, to even notice the anguish of a bullied kid in their class, let alone reach out in an act of human love to befriend and comfort?
Our work is cut out for us. We must MUST act with ever more kindness and re-train ourselves, friends and families to work hard, very very hard, to open our eyes and see the loss of humanity in the world around us – not 1,000 miles away but literally in our own little spheres – and fight to encourage that humanity to grow and even prosper in the face of all the negateve forces we have unleashed on ourselves.
Then and only then will little girls and boys be saved from tragedy, and have opportunity to thrive with joy.”
Amen.
