Back in elementary school a teacher told us a story, it went roughly like this:
Marco was a matador, a rising to fame and highly skilled beginner, who fell in love with a woman by the of Jasmine, he worked hard day and night to woo her, one day inviting her to his show and revealing his gorgeous cape emblazoned with her name. That night she accepted his wooing and began dating him. They begin to fall in love and start dating seriously. One day, after a particularly fanciful fair in the arena, Marco earns enough money to hire a painter to immortalize Jasmine and himself. The painter is a man by the name of Lorenzo, Lorenzo isn't like Marco, he is an artist with a flair for the dramatic and channels raw emotions, living by the job and at times starving for weeks and others spending like a king. Swept by his free spirit Jasmine finds herself falling for the painter, as a portrait takes weeks or more to truly sculpt into perfection, and what with Marco being too busy to attend each section, they got to know each other very well and her heart began beating for him. One day Marco returns home to find Jasmine in bed with Lorenzo (elementary school teacher said they were just "cuddling"). Marco then decides to grab the decorative spear gifted to him by a fan and thrust it into her heart, killing Jasmine, and proceeded to punch Lorenzo, and breaking his dominant hand, before telling the man to leave his sight.
I remember what happened next so clearly, my teacher said "Why did he kill Jasmine, nobody can have her now? Why didn't he just kill Lorenzo?" and she didn't really want an answer, but I remember raising my hand and saying "Jasmine was the one who betrayed him, Lorenzo was just the person it happened to be with, only one of them broke his heart and betrayed his trust, it didn't have to be Lorenzo, if she was capable of betraying him once then she could do it again with anyone else too". My teacher got this funny look on her face and repeated: "But if he just killed Lorenzo he would have gotten her back" upon which I said, "He didn't want her back, he wanted to punish her for hurting him in such a cruel way, like when Bryce made me drop my lollipop the other day and I threw a kickball at his head, I threw the ball to punish him, it doesn't mean I wanted the lollipop back, it was on the ground, I'm not putting that back in my mouth, but I still had to throw the ball at Bryce so he knew that it was no good to do that, but unlike the lollipop she choose to fall on the ground and get dirty, she was a person who made a choice, Lorenzo was beaten to vent his anger, Jasmine was the true villain" and this went on for like 6 minutes of her trying to convince the class that Jasmine didn't deserve to die, she could've been gotten back, only Lorenzo was the problem, etc. I was truly horrified back then, and it stuck with me for nearly 2 decades, the idea that my teacher so vehemently denied someone's culpability in their own actions and tried to convince me and the class that Lorenzo was the one who deserved to die so he could have her back..... Like wtf, was there no cops in this story, even if there weren't and he got away with it, how does he trust her ever again? Like wtf wtf wtf. Surprisingly I never got in trouble for this argument, but regardless I've never forgotten it.
