{"id":858,"date":"2026-10-29T06:38:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=858"},"modified":"2026-10-29T06:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:38:17","slug":"he-was-laughing-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/10\/29\/he-was-laughing-too\/","title":{"rendered":"He Was Laughing Too"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: He Was Laughing Too -->\n<style>@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;500;700&family=Literata:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400&display=swap');\n.byn{--bg:#F1EDE4;--darkest:#1C1F2B;--mid:#2E3F7A;--heading:#C8862A;--cool:#5F7F7A;--light:#F2CF5B;--surface-verse:#F9F6EF;--surface-deep:#E2E5EC;font-family:'Literata',Georgia,serif;color:var(--darkest);background:var(--bg);max-width:720px;margin:2em auto;padding:2.5em 2em;line-height:1.7;font-size:1.05em}\n.byn .eyebrow{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.85em;letter-spacing:.18em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);font-weight:500;margin:0 0 .4em}\n.byn h2{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.3em;letter-spacing:.08em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);margin:2em 0 .7em;border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding-bottom:.3em}\n.byn .verse{font-family:'Literata',Georgia,serif;font-style:italic;font-size:1.08em;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:normal;background:var(--surface-verse);border-left:4px solid var(--heading);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0;color:var(--darkest)}\n.byn .verse-cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.82em;letter-spacing:.1em;color:var(--mid);margin-top:.6em;text-transform:uppercase}\n.byn .divider{border:none;border-top:1px solid var(--heading);margin:2em auto;width:80px}\n.byn p{margin:0 0 1.1em}\n.byn .pull{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.15em;letter-spacing:.04em;color:var(--darkest);border-top:1px solid var(--heading);border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding:1em 0;margin:1.6em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4}\n.byn .byn-deep{background:var(--surface-deep);border-left:4px solid var(--cool);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0}\n@media (max-width:600px){.byn{padding:1.6em 1.2em}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"byn\">\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">By Name \u00b7 Week 2 \u00b7 Thursday \u00b7 BULLIES<\/p>\n<p>He is a junior in marching band, and his section has a group chat. Mostly it is memes and complaints about early call times. But for most of the fall there has also been a nickname for one of the freshmen.<\/p>\n<p>It is about the way the kid marches. It is not the worst thing anyone has ever said. But it is in the chat every day, and somebody always has a new version of it.<\/p>\n<p>He did not start it. He has laughed at it, a lot. A couple of times he added to it, because the seniors were in the chat and it got a reaction.<\/p>\n<h2>The harm came from inside the wall<\/h2>\n<p>All week we have been looking at the voice outside the wall. Nehemiah 5 is the turn. The wall is half built, the enemies outside are still circling, and Nehemiah finds out his own people are pushing the poor around.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">About that time there was a great outcry from the people and their wives against their fellow Jews.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Nehemiah 5:1 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He does not explain it away because the real threat is outside. He calls it what it is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">So I continued, \u201cWhat you are doing is not right. Shouldn\u2019t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our foreign enemies?<span class=\"verse-cite\">Nehemiah 5:9 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That is where I would put this junior. He was not the enemy outside the wall. He was on the inside, in the section, laughing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God\u2019s likeness.<span class=\"verse-cite\">James 3:9 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, this should not be!<span class=\"verse-cite\">James 3:10 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>He took the chat to the director<\/h2>\n<p>He thought about just leaving the chat quietly. That would have gotten him out of it. It would not have done a thing for the freshman, who was not even in the chat and had no idea how long it had been going.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Open your mouth for those with no voice, for the cause of all the dispossessed.<span class=\"verse-cite\">Proverbs 31:8 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So after rehearsal he went to the band director&#8217;s office and showed him the whole thing. Scrolled back to the start. Did not skip his own messages. Said, I was part of this.<\/p>\n<p>The director took it seriously. He talked to the section the next day. The chat was shut down. He called the freshman&#8217;s parents that night.<\/p>\n<div class=\"byn-deep\">\n<p>What it cost: everyone in the section knew who went to the director. The seniors stopped saving him a seat on the bus. A couple of guys he thought were friends did not talk to him for the rest of the week.<\/p>\n<p>And he still owed the freshman something that the director could not hand over for him. He found him after rehearsal and apologized for his own part, out loud, to his face. The freshman listened, said okay, and walked off. He did not make it easy. He did not have to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"pull\">Sometimes the one who has to call for help is the one who was laughing.<\/p>\n<p>Going to an adult was not snitching. It was the first thing all fall that was actually on the freshman&#8217;s side.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Name \u00b7 Week 2 \u00b7 Thursday \u00b7 BULLIES He is a junior in marching band, and his section has a group chat. Mostly it is memes and complaints about early call times. But for most of the fall there&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-called-by-name"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SU_20261029_BLOG.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":860,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}