The Question: You decided to move back to your hometown after being gone for over 20 years. You’ve relocated yourself and your successful business at the same time. You’re looking for local people to employee, and you conduct several interviews. The best candidate for one of the positions which you’re trying to fill is the child of the very person who tormented you from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade; a person you still despise to this day because s/he was relentless in making every minute of your school life beyond miserable. What do you do?

My 2 Cents: When I was at Howard, I was taking a class with a young lady who I was pretty sure I knew, but I couldn’t place her face specifically. After about four weeks of class, she unsmilingly walked up to me and said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“You look familiar, but I can’t quite remember who you remind me of,” I told her.

“We went to middle school together for the one year I lived with my grandmother in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” she said.

Through my wide grin, I said, “OK, that’s where I know you from! How are you, homegirl?”

She looked at me for a long time and finally said, “I hate you.”

I stood there stunned as she walked away.

As I walked home from class, it very slowly began to dawn on me who this person was in my past. She was a little girl who was new to our school, and she was very, as they say, “homey-looking.” For some reason, and I have no idea why, I made it my mission to torment this child every, single day I saw her. I’m most certain that the majority of my motivation was the fact that she never said anything or did anything back to my taunts. That just encouraged me to harass her even more.

Please don’t ask me why I did that to her. In every other person’s case, I was always the one who would befriend the not-so-popular children. With her, I just acted flat-out foolish.

Eventually, she gave me a chance to ask her forgiveness, and we had an opportunity to become genuine friends as adults. She explained to me the terrible circumstances that had brought her to her grandmother’s house that one school year and why she always looked raggedy and worn down. Listening to that time in her life, and knowing I made it worse because I tormented her at school, made me cry so hard I lost my breath.

When I posed this question, I was thinking about her.

If I found myself in the situation in the scenario above, I’d hire the child of the person who made my school years a living nightmare. I wouldn’t hold his/her father’s/mother’s shortcomings against the child, especially when I remember that I’d worn the shoe of the tormenter this one year in my life.

I heard this a long time ago, and I still don’t know who said it: People forget what you do. People forget what you say, but people never forget how you made them feel.

Thank God for forgiveness and reconciliation.

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Take a few moments to check out the tweets from Twitter on this subject:

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Starfiire58  hire the child..they are not a part of the past.

acmeek  You forgive and hire the kid. Tall order…I know. But Christians should forgive. Arghhhh

DrAriafya  At my age, why keep grudges? Just because my parents ate sour grapes, doesn’t mean they put my teeth on edge. Let go!

TankaBar_JasonD  I would let the kid work for me this could be the change in your life to patch things up.

MusingMom  hire the child…let bygones be bygones…people change

Mo_Rease  I’d put that in the past and hope that the child is cut out for the position. No sense in living in the past.

LadyJay91  You hire them ANYWAY the child doesn’t have anything to do with the parents actions.

md20737  I wld not consider the person 4 the job bc I would have a bias. Even if they are the best theres no need for potential distrust

tclarkusa  If you feel they’re the best person for the job…HIRE them. Avoid judging them by their parent until they prove otherwise.

BLKMGK  Can’t do it, no way, no how. Send ‘em back to the unemployment office.

JoshDamage  not hire him/her lol *shrugs*

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Also, see the responses from Gather.com

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Lori: there is nothing in this world that could make me go back to my home town . Like you I had lots of people making my life hell because my mom was mentally ill so I would not go and would not hire the people who literally killed my childhood

Amber: I would hire the child of the person who used to torment me. I would hope people would judge me on me, not based on how another family member of mine has treated them. And if over time I see that I hired a person with an attitude just like their parent before them, I also wouldn’t hesitate to fire them.

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The commentary doesn’t have to end!

Please feel free to continue to add your comments below.