As a countdown to my 30th birthday on March 18, I’ve committed to offering 30 people, things and experiences I want to celebrate from the last 30 years. Grab a piece of cake and enjoy reading!
I was always a good kid. Not entirely a goodie two shoes, but almost. I was definitely what you’d call a fine, upstanding lass.
So you might imagine the horror, the utter sense of failure I felt as an 11 year old when I got detention for the first time. This wasn’t a sit-on-the-bench-for-20-minutes-during-gym-class kind of detention, either. This was the kind where you had to bring a slip home for your parent to sign. More painfully, it came with this lecture from my teacher:
“I might have expected some of the boys in the class to behave this way. But not you.”
I was totally ashamed. I remember walking home from school as slowly as I could that day, dreading the reaction my dad would have when I presented him with the slip, knowing he’d lecture me and express his disappointment. Once I got in the door, however, I just wanted to rip the bandaid off as quickly as possible, so I spilled the beans.
“Dad, you need to sign this slip. I got detention.”
“What for?” he asked, looking up from the newspaper.
“Well, we were in music class and singing some song and it sounded kinda country to me and so at the end I said, really quietly, ‘Yeehaw!’ I thought only Canice could hear and she would find it funny, but it turns out Mr. Draper did and now I have to go to detention. And he told me I was acting like the boys.”
I’m convinced that parents have no choice but to commit various crimes in the lives of their children. More often than not, however, parents tend to provide amazing moments of salvation. My dad raised his eyebrows, chortled, signed the paper and said:
“Well, that’s ridiculous. You got detention for that?!?”
And once I realized he wasn’t calling my behavior ridiculous, together we laughed about it and made fun of Mr. Draper for being so uptight and gendered about the whole thing.
These days, I will occasionally get myself in trouble intentionally. I’ll have that momentary awareness that I can back off and be “good” or I can move forward and behave just a little bit badly. You know, like the boys. Because I received that permission nearly 20 years ago, the cost of behaving badly doesn’t seem so high these days (if you know me well, you’re aware that this is particularly true when being funny is on the table).
In a world that still rewards people in general – and women in particular – for not stepping out of line, I must celebrate my 11 year old self who took the risk to make her friend laugh in music class. And Mr. Draper, for allowing me the opportunity to feel woefully imperfect. And my father, for teaching me that it was good for me, too, to be a boy.
Tags: celebration, change, fear
