Crossroads

I feel, in my lifetime, as short as it has been, I have come to a few important crossroads. You know, choices. The kind of choices that can alter a lifetime.

The first moral dilemma I vividly remember was at age 12! Along with a few close friends I stole a pen from the elementary school spirit shop. Looking back on the whole experience the thing that is most burned into my conscience is not the significance of the crime, but of the punishment. I know that is what all elementary principals are trained to do, but the severity of detention after school for one whole week devastated me! This 6Th grade year was filled with all sorts of dramatic, devastating experiences but none so devastating as this one. I wonder now why?

I wonder if someone would have taken the time to explain the significance of the act of theft, rather than making me pay for what I had done, if I would have made different choices in the years to come? I knew what I had done was wrong, but why was I doing it? A 12 year old has not the capacity to self examine and figure these things out.

Needless to say the years that followed were littered with detentions and visits to the principals office. No doubt to receive the attention I so desperately wanted from the parents who were not there.

I've turned out OK, but I do hope that I can do for my girls what was not done for me. I hope that through my life I can provide some sort of understanding of the human nature. I want them to understand before they do, be knowledgeable of their choices and the reasoning behind them. I want them to know themselves before someone else figures it out for them. I want hem to be happy with who they are and who they will become. Is that too much to yearn for?