My parents had an office downtown and we sometimes had to ride the el to meet them at work. One day my mother gave us carfare and directed us both to go downtown after school. One of the two more or less equidistant stations was marginally closer, but James wanted to go to the other one. “Why?” I asked, “it’s farther.” He said he was going to get a slurpee at the newly opened 7-11. Now, my brother never had a penny to his name. To this day he never has a penny because if he’s got money, he spends it. I was immediately suspicious. “Where did you get money?” Well, he had a plan. He was just 12, so he was supposed to pay the adult fare. However, he planned to pay the child fare and the difference would exactly buy him a slurpee.
From the heights of my self-righteous 13 year old self, I pronounced this plan a moral outrage. Stealing, lying and cheating, all to get a cup of sugar water that was bad for you!! The body is the temple of the holy spirit, etc. Even now, I – along with a whole host of mostly Swiss relatives – can moralize, sermonize and generally attempt to edify my listeners in response to almost any stimulus whatsoever. So I can only imagine what I might have spouted about this plan at an age when I regularly carried a bible to school. But James was impervious to the path of righteousness and chose the path to the 7-11. Refusing to even acknowledge him, I went to our usual station. When the train I caught passed the 7-11, I looked down and saw James walking calmly along the street, sucking on his slurpee. It looked really good and I was jealous. I probably didn’t tell on him or explain why we had caught different trains. I definitely didn’t tell him until more than 30 years later that I had craved that slurpee.
Not that I was an angel; my transgressions were just generally more secretive. One day a year or so after the slurpee incident, I came home from school and found a bag of cookies on the counter. I ate one, then another and another until the entire bag was gone. When I called the office to say I was leaving the house, my mother said that Maria had left a bag of something on the counter, had I seen it? Maria was a high-strung and definitely odd French woman who lived close by. She came often to look after my grandmother, who didn’t speak English and was bed-ridden for the last couple years of her life. Embarrassed that I had eaten the entire bagful, I said that I hadn’t seen anything. Then I went downtown, had a piano lesson and eventually arrived at the office to find major drama happening. Via various telephone conversations, Maria had decided that my mother was calling her a liar. Under the brunt of her haranguing, my mother was deciding that we were going to have to move. I could tell my father thought her response a bit extreme. He expected that the fuss would calm down. But my mother – who never joked or bluffed – was so serious and upset that I instantly confessed. Later that evening I had to call Maria on the telephone and confess to her. She talked and lectured and harangued and berated for almost three hours. (Did I mention that she was a bit loopy?) Eventually, everyone went to bed and there I was, still sitting on the kitchen floor listening to Maria go on and on. I just couldn’t be rude and hang up, especially since I felt I deserved this punishment.
Don't know whether to laugh or cry at this story. Looking back on what kids do , it is quite funny but the potential for serious misunderstand and breaking of friendships is serious. I guess you splurged blueicing on the chocolate to make a messy point :)
