"Yes, it gets better, but I also understand that saying to a 15-year-old that, 'Oh, don't worry, just wait a year', is like saying 'Wait a lifetime', but every single person has the right to go to school and not be afraid"
About this Quote
Mercer takes the soft-focus optimism of "it gets better" and drags it back into the harsh math of adolescence. The line works because it refuses the cheap comfort of hindsight: adults love to prescribe patience because time is abundant for them. For a 15-year-old, time is the entire problem. "Wait a year" lands as "wait a lifetime" because adolescence is lived in close-up; pain has no long view, only the next hallway, the next lunch period, the next night you dread waking up to repeat.
He’s doing comedian’s work here, but not with punchlines. The wit is in the ruthless compression: one small temporal shift exposes a moral dodge. When adults tell kids to endure, they’re often outsourcing responsibility to the calendar. Mercer makes that evasion visible, then pivots to a harder, more civic claim: school safety isn’t a personal growth project, it’s a right. The sentence is built like a trapdoor: empathy first ("I understand"), then indictment ("every single person has the right...").
The subtext is about how institutions launder cruelty into "character-building". Bullying, homophobia, and social exclusion get framed as rites of passage, as if suffering is the tuition you pay for adulthood. Mercer rejects that bargain. He’s not denying resilience; he’s refusing to romanticize it. Better shouldn’t be a promise we make after damage is done. It should be a standard we enforce now, in the places kids are legally required to be.
He’s doing comedian’s work here, but not with punchlines. The wit is in the ruthless compression: one small temporal shift exposes a moral dodge. When adults tell kids to endure, they’re often outsourcing responsibility to the calendar. Mercer makes that evasion visible, then pivots to a harder, more civic claim: school safety isn’t a personal growth project, it’s a right. The sentence is built like a trapdoor: empathy first ("I understand"), then indictment ("every single person has the right...").
The subtext is about how institutions launder cruelty into "character-building". Bullying, homophobia, and social exclusion get framed as rites of passage, as if suffering is the tuition you pay for adulthood. Mercer rejects that bargain. He’s not denying resilience; he’s refusing to romanticize it. Better shouldn’t be a promise we make after damage is done. It should be a standard we enforce now, in the places kids are legally required to be.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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