What Kids Say About Hate

Kids hate, too. Especially when it’s a new moon.

Sadie is 9 and considers herself an awesome person.
Neighbor Girl is 8 and considers herself a good person.
Eva is 10 and considers herself a Link (from The Legend of Zelda) kind of person.
Wolf is 17 and considers himself a nature person.
Max is 17 and considers himself a caring person, who expresses it by harshing on people.
Will is 14 and says, “I don’t consider myself.”
Dora is 12 and (inaccurately) considers herself a mediocre person.

VICE: Who do you hate?
Sadie: People.

Neighbor Girl: School.

Eva: Connor.

Who’s that?
An old friend. Now he’s my enemy.

How did he become your enemy?
He tried to kiss me. Now I hate him.

How do you express your hate?
I won’t speak to him. I look at him, and I walk away.

He sounds like a beast.
He is.

Where do you feel hate, like where in your body?
I feel it all over me.

Like ants crawling?
It feels like angry.

Neighbor Girl: It feels like stupid.

Sadie: I don’t feel hate. I think hate.

Wolf: I feel hate in my heart sometimes. It feels tense and sick. Scary. Upsetting.

Is there a time you feel hate more?
Neighbor Girl: In nightmares.

Sadie: At math time.

Eva: When I see Connor.

Wolf: When someone who used to be in our family is drunk or passed out, which is usually 3 AM.

Neighbor Girl: That’s the death time, 3 AM. That’s when ghosts come out. Wolf and I learned that from Paranormal State.

Max: Not so much hate, but I feel more irritable every time the sun is going down and the moon is coming up.

The darkening.
Max: Yeah. Especially when it’s a new moon.

Will: When I wake up. Any morning I have to wake up and go to school.

Dora: I don’t hate anybody or anything at any time.

You’ve never felt like kicking somebody or something’s face in?
Sometimes maybe just for a brief moment, but it’s not hate – just thinking someone’s being an idiot.

Do you think you love tepidly, since you hate tepidly?
No. I would say I feel love more strongly, because since I don’t waste time on hate, there’s more room for it.

Max: Now that I’ve turned 17, it seems like it’s most people I hate. It’s not rational; everything just pisses me off.

When you were 16, did you hate less?
Yeah. It’s not hate so much as I’m grouchy. It was really shortly after my birthday I started being kind of bitchy. I keep quiet about it. If I really, really hate you, I’ll say nothing to you.

Are you deceptive?
Manipulative. No. I feel like there’s… um…

Do you feel like there’s things in your way for your real life to begin?
Yeah. Exactly that.

That’s what I felt like at your age. Full of unarticulated hate and being held back. Where do you feel hate?
In my chest area. It’s a sinking feeling. Because I don’t want to feel hateful. Because I know that I don’t actually feel that way, but it’s just that I’m 17, and I’m disappointed that I can’t control it, because it’s totally unnecessary to feel like that–I didn’t feel like that before. There’s better things to do, that I wish I was doing instead of hating.

Will: I hate Kony. A lot of what he’s done, he didn’t do it himself. He’s like Charles Manson, telling people to do things for him. That’s even worse. I Like Stop Kony pages on Facebook. That’s the new hate. Like hate pages. Also, I started a group at school to raise money to send to the anti-Kony people.

Where do you feel hate?
In my rage receptors.

Kony better watch out for you.
It just pissed me off so much when I first heard about Kony, and when I heard more, my rage receptors were all, “Rarrgh!”

Previously – What Kids Say About Jokes