Sometimes You Have To Rat

It Can Be Trouble If Kids Don`t Tattle

November 17, 1992|By Wayne Baker.

Willie Clayborn`s friends thought they were doing the right thing by not telling.

It was a secret they shared last Tuesday, the day Willie brought his pistol to school. The 13-year-old pulled out the .22 every time their teacher turned her back, and nobody said a thing.

He`d fondle the gun and put it away. He`d pretend to shoot it, then hide it as the teacher turned around.

Finally, his teacher turned her back to the classroom. She was facing the blackboard when she said she heard a pop. Willie had pulled the gun out one last time and it accidentally fired. He was dead. Now his 7th-grade classmates at Sherman School on Chicago`s South Side wonder if they should have told on Willie.

You know why they thought they shouldn`t - it`s not right to rat on friends; telling on enemies can end up in a fight; sometimes you just don`t trust adults.

``If kids tell on each other, even if they`re best friends, they become enemies and get into fights,`` said Gary V., 12, of Roselle.

But sometimes keeping a secret is dangerous.

``At age 13 or 14, no one wants to be perceived as allying themselves with adults,`` said Dr. Charles Fox, a psychiatrist who has studied the problems of children and adolescents.

``There is a real powerful code of behavior that you don`t get your friends in trouble,`` said Fox. That`s dangerous because kids don`t always perceive how serious a situation is.

``At that age, kids believe that nothing terrible can ever happen to them,`` Fox said.

But something terrible did happen in that classroom. Later, one of Willie`s classmates, Louise D., said, ``I wanted to tell the teacher, but I never found time to.``

What Louise and her friends are now realizing is that sometimes telling on someone can save lives.

``If a student says something that could prevent a bad thing from happening, that`s not being a narc, that`s being a good friend,`` said Paul Finholt, a guidance counselor at Naperville`s Gregory Middle School.

Last Tuesday, a lot of the kids who knew Willie had the pistol did not say a word. Some classmates said it is not unusual for students to have guns. Willie had been harassed and assaulted, his dad said. People say he was just trying to protect himself. But Tuesday, Willie had a lot of friends who were just being friends - and now they wish they`d told his secret.