Mary Kay Fualaau, happy at last
Writing by treason on Monday, 23 of May , 2005 at 8:40 pm
Mary Kay Letourneau, 43, and Vili Fualaau, 22, were married Friday night. I wasn’t going to address the whole Mary Kay thing, but I’ve changed my mind. I have my reasons. I imagine that this is a fascinating case because it allows people to take sides. One side believes that Mary Kay is a nut job and a criminal (a rapist, specifically), and the other side, somewhat more idealistic, sees her as the poster child for true love. Here’s a bright, attractive young teacher, married with four children, who falls in love with her student. He’s twelve and still in elementary school.
This in itself is not criminal. Strange things happen every day. It’s how the average human being deals with these circumstances that matters. Perhaps Mary Kay made some wrong choices. Someone else might have consulted a professional. Or removed herself from the situation. Easier to do if you’re single, but Mary Kay had a husband and family and couldn’t just relocate on a whim. She could have quit her job, but she was, by all accounts, an excellent teacher, and she needed that salary to support her family. So she stayed put.
Someone else might have told herself that as strong as her feelings were, she just simply would not be able to act on them. She was an adult who, at her wedding, promised to remain faithful, and she had her four children to think about. They should have been her first concern. But it doesn’t stop there. As a teacher, she was responsible for so many other children. Teachers are role models, the wise adults, the guides, the counselors. They’re supposed to have it all together.
I never wanted to think of my teachers as normal human beings when I was a kid. I wanted them to be perfect - smarter and better than their students. I wanted them on a pedestal. In short, I wanted to respect them. When I was ten, I found myself at an adult party with my mother. One of my teachers was there. I discovered that night that she was a lush. She even staggered over to me and breathed in my face: “See? We’re just like everybody else!” It’s not something I really wanted to hear. This was a teacher whose students were terrified of her. After that night, she’d lost her mystique. The good news was that I was no longer intimidated by her - I knew her secret. But I wished I’d never seen her as a regular person. I liked her when she was more. I liked her when she was my teacher: no nonsense, strict, hard. Knowing that she had a soft underbelly made her vulnerable and less effective as a professional. I felt sorry for her.
The other part of the Letourneau story deals with the role of women in society and age. As a woman of a certain age, I’m intrigued by the reaction to Mary Kay. We would expect such behavior from a man, but never a woman - especially a mother! It has always struck me as odd that our society puts so much emphasis on motherhood. Frankly, you can be the biggest slut in the world, but suddenly you have a baby and you’re the Virgin Mary. Excuse me, has anyone ever studied biology? How does having a baby make you pure all of a sudden? And this goes back to parents killing their children. We expect it from men, but are horrified when women kill their children. Poor men! Yeah, let them go to war - women are just so fragile. We need to protect them because they’re the nurturers. Ask another woman and they’ll tell you the truth: women are wolverines. If feminists want equality and a level playing field, then they better fess up. They can’t hide behind the feminine mystique and use it to their advantage when they want to. Like when it’s time to move a refrigerator. I digress. More on this later when I discuss women in the military.
So Mary Kay tossed discretion aside to have sex with a little boy. Discretion, a dead concept. There was a time that people picked up and moved to another state and changed their names. A few years ago, a male supervisor and I interviewed a woman who told us everything there was to know about her method of birth control. This wasn’t the response we expected to our standard interview questions. Well, times have changed and now shame is worn like a badge of honor. Yes, I know, I have a blog and I reveal things that I probably shouldn’t, but that’s me. This does not adversely affect friends and family. Not yet, anyway. When you’re a single entity you can make choices and be a little more frivolous because they won’t affect other people. Unfortunately, Mary Kay’s choices affected her family, her husband’s family, her paramour’s family, the community, and the world. She destroyed her husband. She gave up her four children. She went to prison, ruining her reputation and career. But she didn’t care because her happiness was the most important thing in the world.
So whatever happened to doing the right thing especially when you don’t want to? Couldn’t Mary Kay have been honest with her family? She should have ended the relationship with her husband before she started a new one. And it would have been helpful to wait until Vili grew up and was legal. But that would have required waiting. And chances are, Vili would have gone on to junior high, then high school, then found a lot of pretty teenage girls to date and he would have stopped thinking about Mary Kay. Instead, with two daughters, he was bound to Mary Kay and waited for her release. For a kid, he has shown more maturity and devotion to a partner than Mary Kay showed to her first family.
I know there are old souls out there. Chronological age doesn’t always mesh with emotional age. Mary Kay claims that she and Vili are soulmates - it doesn’t matter that there’s an age difference. My mother always said there was a twenty-year difference in my parents’ ages. Actually, my father was only seventeen years older - my mother always liked to be coy about her age. When I was eleven, she fell over an overpass (long story) and broke her leg. The young, good-looking doctor at the hospital thought she was about thirty. I said I had siblings that age. They assumed I was in shock and stopped asking me questions. I have never lied about my age. It takes way too much effort, and I’m basically lazy, so why take on the extra burden? My problem is that after age twenty-seven, I’ve forgotten how old I am and actually have to take a moment to figure out the current year (this is 2005, right?), then subtract the year I was born - which I do remember clearly. Mack the Knife was on the charts. And the greatest Cadillac of all time was created.
I understand part of the Mary Kay story. The age part. I’ve known my significant other (Help, someone! We need a new euphemism!) for fifteen years. We met when he was seventeen. I was - and still am - twelve years older. We were coworkers (for a short time I was actually his “superior”), but being as brilliant as he is, he quickly became a peer, then moved up into supervisory roles - leaving older employees in the dust. He was smart and had an impressive work ethic. Wanted to learn everything and take on extra responsibility. He seemed much older. I could say something and he knew what I was talking about. Glenn Miller, for instance. I started thinking he’d been in Europe during the big conflict. Then I’d do the math. He was born long after The Beatles broke up. We became friends, then when he was of legal age and then some, we dated. And didn’t this create a fuss! I have heard the term “cradle robber” more times than I care to admit. My aunt Helen was eight years older than my uncle George and they had a long, wonderful marriage. But it was never fully accepted by the family. Go figure. If George had been eight years older than Helen, would there have been an issue? Of course not.
So for that reason, I hope that Mary Kay can make peace with her former husband and four children. I was happy to hear that one of her teenage daughters was maid-of-honor at the ceremony. My wish for the new couple is that they raise healthy, well-adjusted children, and live happily ever after.
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