Tragedy of Sick Joke Should Haunt 'Jokers'

The following is a column by Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts that was syndicated today. I read it in the Lexington Herald Leader. I'll offer a few comments after the story.

This will kill you.

Have you heard about the practical joke that was played on a girl in Dardenne Prairie, near St. Louis? You're going to slap your knee at this one. You're going to bust a gut.

See, this girl - Megan Meier was her name - was 13. You remember 13, that gawky, uncertain age when you're growing into a new body, hormones firing off like howitzers. They say Megan was a heavyset child, emotionally vulnerable as only an adolescent girl can be. They say she had ADD and struggled with depression.

Are you laughing yet?

It seems Megan had this friend, a girl who lived a few doors down. Through seventh grade, they had gone round and round: best friends one day, feuding the next, the way kids do. Finally, Megan broke off the friendship for good. She was done with the other girl. But the girl was not done with her.

This all happened last year, by the way, but we are indebted to reporter Steve Pokin of the Suburban Journals newspaper for bringing it to our attention just days ago. Since then, the story has made national headlines. Because everybody loves a good joke.

So anyway, sometime after Megan and the other girl ended their relationship, this guy named Josh Evans shows up on Megan's MySpace page saying he wants to be added as a friend. And this Josh, he's like a gift from the god of cute boys. He's new in town, home schooled, fatherless, a musician, a major hottie. And he wants to be friends. He thinks Megan is pretty. Chunky, socially awkward Megan.

She describes herself to him with an acrostic. M, for modern. E, for enthusiastic. G, for goofy. A, for alluring.

N, for neglected.

For a time, everything was good. Oh, it was strange that Josh never gave her a phone number and never asked for hers, but Megan overlooked that. Then Josh sent that strange message: "I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends." Megan was shocked. Where was this coming from?

It was a Sunday night. As it turned out, the last Sunday of Megan's life. Are you laughing yet?

The next day after school, Megan asked her mother - Tina Meier restricted Megan's online access - to log on the computer so Megan could check for new messages. What she found horrified her. Josh was still sending mean notes. And he had apparently been sharing her messages with others. Now the online community was abuzz with invective. Megan was fat. Megan was a slut.

Megan was destroyed. Especially after one last hateful message from Josh. You're a bad person, he said. Everybody hates you. The world would be better without you.

He got his wish just hours later. Megan Meier hanged herself that night.

Weeks later, her family got the punch line. There never was a Josh. He was a fiction, created by the parents, Curt and Lori Drew, of the girl who had once been Megan's friend. By. The. Parents.

People have threatened and harassed the Drews and there are fears for their safety. No fears of prosecution, though; what they did broke no laws. But me, I don't want to hurt or jail them. I just want them to know how funny that joke was. How hee-fricking-larious.

No one wants acceptance quite as desperately as an adolescent girl who has never been the most popular, never been the prettiest. What brilliance, what comic genius, to take that vulnerability and use it against her.

So no, I don't want these folks hurt. I want them healthy. I want them long-lived. And I want them to be reminded, every day of their long, healthy lives, what a great joke they pulled.

They really paid Megan back. They really got her good.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

© 2007 The Miami Herald

As one who is a vocal advocate for adolescents, I admit that when I first read this story I was angry. Teenagers have more than enough problems simply navigating adolescence without having to worry about adults causing them emotional harm. How often have we heard of adults who contribute to a teenagers' troubles by purposely using their knowledge of the adolescent psyche to hurt a teenager because of a slight (whether real or perceived) to their own child.

If this had happened in your youth group, how would you have responded...
* to the parents who lost their child?
* to the parents who committed the crime? (It might not be a legal crime, but in my opinion, it's certainly a crime.)
* to the teen of the parents who committed the crime?
* to the youth in your group who knew either of the teenagers?

Who Defines What Real Beauty Is?

Watch this important video. Think about the powerful influences in the lives of the students in your group (or even your own daughter). As the video urges, please talk to your daughter about these issues before the beauty industry does.

A Prayer for Study

At my school, we are in the home stretch of the semester. Students have one month left to wrap up work (and we professors have one month left to teach and grade!). In light of this, I offer the following prayer by Thomas Aquinas, which he used before he ever preached, dictated, or wrote. May it serve as a helpful guide for you as well.



Ineffable Creator,
Who, from the treasures of Your wisdom,
have established three hierarchies of angels,
have arrayed them in marvelous order
above the fiery heavens,
and have marshaled the regions
of the universe with such artful skill,
You are proclaimed
the true font of light and wisdom,
and the primal origin
raised high beyond all things.
Pour forth a ray of Your brightness
into the darkened places of my mind;
disperse from my soul
the twofold darkness
into which I was born:
sin and ignorance.
You make eloquent the tongues of infants.
refine my speech
and pour forth upon my lips
The goodness of Your blessing.
Grant to me
keenness of mind,
capacity to remember,
skill in learning,
subtlety to interpret,
and eloquence in speech.
May You
guide the beginning of my work,
direct its progress,
and bring it to completion.
You Who are true God and true Man,
who live and reign, world without end.
Amen.

Source: Anderson, R. and Moser, J. (2000). The Aquinas Prayer Book: The Prayers and Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press.

Water Buffalos and the Church - a study in comparison

This is one of the most amazing videos I've ever seen. It is a battle between a herd of buffalo, a pride of lions, and two crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park. It really shows the herd instinct to protect the young.


I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the vows we as a congregation take when a child is dedicated or baptized at a local church. (Don't worry, there's a tie in to the video.)

Depending on the faith tradition you're a part of, the words, directed at the congregation, generally go like this: "People of God, will you nurture one another in the Christian faith and life, and include [parent's name] and [parent's name], and now [name of the child] in your care? Will you surround them with a community of love and forgiveness? Will you pray for them, extend to them Christian fellowship, and as much as in you lies assist [parent's name] and [parent's name] in raising [name of the child] by nurturing his/her growth toward spiritual maturity?"

The congregation typically responds: "By the grace of God, we will."

Far too often, as the ceremony ends, so does the commitment of many parishioners. They fulfilled their duty by offering the words expected of them, but they have no intention of living out those words, for they require the member to move outside their comfort zone, being willing to risk shame and ridicule at the expense of the child as he/she grows up, and in the end no one wants to be responsible for the spiritual nurture of someone who is not my child.

Yet, I don't think those words are put there just to sound nice. I think they're intended to give us a new picture of what God intended for the community of faith to be--a community that takes seriously its role and responsibility in the nurture of all children. This means many things, but one of the things it means is that we do our best to protect students from harm. Now we can't always do this, and the reality is that some (not all) students just have to experiment in order to learn what not to do.

But what would happen if a community of faith took their role so seriously that they, like the buffalo herd, wouldn't just give up on a child when it found itself in the teeth of sin? What if the community instead organized itself, charged ahead to the scene, and made a way to rescue the child from the clutches of evil?

Think of the enormous impact this would have, not only on the child, but on all children, who see the community as being for them, unwilling that they should fall into sin, but doing their best to provide an avenue of hope and liberation.

Just some things I've been thinking about.