I got sent to the principal's office a lot as a kid.
Especially in first grade. Got into so much trouble then... I seldom have bad dreams, and so when they occur my nightmares revolve more around knowing I've screwed up irrevocably, or something's changed in a way impossible to receive closure of the old form. During the interim between Cailins, being shipped school to school and being out of contact from her, the stuff of my nightmares was peeling to the edge of the soccer field, seeing Cailin there dressed in what would pass for preppy in the late '90s-early '00s, and finding out that she had gone straight. Obviously that never happened, though again obviously both of us had mellowed out and have mellowed out, from the days of dedicating an entire weekday just to flushing things down the toilet...
Yes, we got into a lot of trouble as children; got sent to the principal's office together.
Now would be a great time for a Prince of Egypt style "you were always there getting into trouble right along with me" moment, but... every time it happened, when both of us together were sent to the freaking scary pants-wetting traumatizing Principal's office (alright, it was not that bad, but it always seemed underlit, and also grown-up size instead of grade-schooler-sized, and yeah, really underlit,) Cailin would just call the principal's ear over to her mouth, whisper something into it (the ear not the mouth,) be excused because of whatever-it-was-that-she-just-said, and roll out, leaving me to deal with the windfall of both of our mischief.
Thanks, girl. Didn't need you anyway.
I can no longer recall how I extracted myself from those situations, or how serious of trouble I really was in, and to this day, I don't think I'll ever know what it was that Cailin whispered there either, so that her meting out of punishment was (to all my ken) nonexistent. I asked her once, what she said each of those times. but her reply was, somewhat noncommittal...
I realized one day, it was totally "I'm sorry," and I could imagine myself an ancient General Authority one day in the far future giving a really inspiring Conference talk, explaining the whispered secret and exerting a big awww from the congregation.
And later on one day I realized, that's not how apologies work, and just being sorry for something isn't going to let you escape doomsday at the school principal's hands. So the mystery remained of what was whispered.
I think it might have been, Cailin saying I've got classes I've gotta go, or more likely I think what she'd explained to me, her justifying her actions behind like ADHD or something and thus being totally inculpable and scott-free. Well, thank you for having a formal diagnosis already by this point, when I wouldn't get mine of anything until 200stinkin3.
And I'm bringing all this up now. No, it has nothing to do with the whisper part. It has to do with the trouble part, and the being left alone part.
Because I realized this morning, it didn't go away. All the worst influences I had on my mission, the bad crowd of Elders I ran with whom I won't call out here, all that was all just like that original mischief. I got caught up in that, too, and nothing really had changed in that decade-and-a-half.
I am just like a kid.
Maybe not anymore, but during my mission, at least, which was far more recent than Kindergarten and first grade. I let myself get tugged along still, just like that, only this time the parties involved knowing better. This morning, I knew what that meant, and what it means, but from that time there's some secret profundity behind the revelation that's been lost, or maybe was never there in the first place.
But I don't know how much of the trouble back in elementary was me, and how much was Cailin. The more recent episodes, however, the mission far-more-than-mischief... there's no practical difference; I went along with it anyway. So I'd rather not say...
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