When I was a kid, I did a lot of dumb things. I mean a LOT of dumb things. I got away with most of it because first of all, it was the 70’s and early 80’s and people didn’t care as much back then. I mean, c’mon, we were told to get out of the house and we’d better not be back before the street lights came on! Second of all, looking back on it, the stuff I was doing wasn’t really all that bad.
I remember one time, when I was probably ten years old, the city was replacing a sewer or something. They had the street dug up, but with these big steel plates on top so cars could drive over the big hole while they were working. Looking back on it, that probably wasn’t a very safe place to work. There were no vertical supports to keep the earth from folding in, just a ten foot deep trench, maybe a hundred feet long, with steel plates laying on top. They had construction horses surrounding it with CAUTION tape strung between them so people wouldn’t fall in. Of course, we weren’t scared away – quite the opposite, this was the kind of place our imaginations begged for! We were archeologists, exploring an unknown cave, then became soldiers, down in the trenches, before we were magically transformed to spies, sneaking through an abandoned mine shaft to get to the villain’s lair!
As we were carefully climbing through the uneven terrain, we heard a noise from above. Everyone halted as we listened for more clues. Just then, my buddy Johnny saw an enemy sneaking up behind us, (entirely in his imagination) and threw a grenade (a muddy chunk of asphalt) as he screamed “DUCK!” – everyone hit the ground. Well, everyone except me. I turned to see what Johnny was yelling about. It hit me square in the forehead, smearing dirt and grease and drawing a little blood. I let out a blood curdling scream as everybody froze and stared, waiting to see if Johnny had killed me, or just maimed me for life. We all scrambled back to the surface, out of the hole, to get a better idea of how bad it was. It was muddy and bloody, and I was feeling a little woozy, so we decided to go back to somebody’s house and clean it up.
When we got there, his mom was home. BIG mistake! Why would we let an adult find out?! They only ask stupid questions, then ground us! She screamed as she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the bathroom. What’s the matter, lady, never seen blood before? I guess as battle-hardened spies, we see this all the time and get used to it. Don’t worry, honey, it’ll be alright! She cleaned me up, put a Snoopy band-aid over the small cut (how embarrassing!), and gave us all lemonade and cookies while she calmed down. If she would have let it go at that, we all would have thanked her for her service and went back to being spies, maybe somewhere above ground. But nooooo! Now she had all kinds of questions, like “how did this happen?” and “does your mother know you got hurt?” That, or course, prompted her to call my mom and let her know that I was okay, which sprung a whole other can of worry and questions from my mom, who was now on her way over to collect me. We could tell that our mission was over and there would be no more adventures for the day.
After my mom brought me home, I was in for another line of questioning, which led to the conversation every kid has had countless times with their parent:
"Why would you think it's okay to play down there?"
"My friends were doing it!"
"If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?"
I wish I knew at that moment that someday yes, I would literally jump off a bridge because my friends were doing it, but that’s a story for another time. At the time, I thought that was the dumbest question I’d ever heard. My friends aren’t dumb enough to jump off a bridge! We were just playing in the coolest muddy cave a kid could find in our urban jungle. What was wrong with doing something that my friends were doing? They were having fun, and we’ve come up with some great ideas together in the past, so why wouldn’t I want to have the fun that they were having?
It would take years and plenty of experiences for me to be able to understand the nuances of that conversation. Mom wasn’t asking me why I would want to have the same fun my friends were having. She was warning me against blindly following the crowd; encouraging me to make my own decisions based on facts. Years later, I get it, but at ten years old, she may as well have been speaking another language. I’m sure in that moment, she was also questioning herself, the past ten years of parenting, and where she’d gone wrong. She probably had long talks with my dad, my parents’ friends, and any other adult she could find trying to reason it all out. I wonder if she ever found any comforting reassurance that her kid, in fact, was not prone to a life of stupidity.
Now that I’m an adult, I can see what she was so scared about. Although I don’t have any kids of my own, I understand when parents say that just keeping their kids alive should earn them an award. I see kids and adults alike just following the herd, making quick decisions with long-lasting results. Kids run into traffic, chasing the ball. Teenagers take their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel on a dare. People jump off a cliff into shallow water, or buy a car they can’t afford so they can impress the neighbors. We all want to make someone proud or to be recognized for doing the right thing. I don’t know about you, but there have been times when the chance of a reward was all the motivation I needed to do something, and I didn’t think about the possible downsides.
Fries taste great, so I should eat them every chance I get!
why am I fat and lethargic?
If I buy this car, the ad tells me I'll be happy and get all the girls!
why can't I afford to go out and have fun instead of working two jobs?
I'm so wasted, let's have another round!
why did my boss fire me? I was only an hour late!
Life is full of choices, and I’m not saying you can’t have fun or get a little out of control sometimes. I’ve had a lot of fun, and I’ve made some bad choices that led to great memories! You just have to step back and consider the options sometimes. Fries taste great, but maybe only eat them sometimes, instead of every meal. That car has so many cool features, but is the price worth years of debt to pay it off, or is there another car that will satisfy your needs and not leave you in debt for so long? Drinking with friends helps take the edge off, but maybe skip the drinks, or just keep it to one or two when you have to work tomorrow. Pulling in the reins a little now can pay huge dividends in the future and let you live a life of happiness for years to come!