Forgive me, I just can’t deliberately break rules
WHEN it comes to trouble, I’m a very bad girl. No, not like what you’re thinking. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m very good, I am very bad at being bad.
I blame my Catholic education. All that business about eternal damnation really freaked me out. No need for a confessional to get me to blab, one black look from a teacher and I’d admit to anything: talking, cheating, stealing.
Of course, I never did any of these things (OK, guilty for talking) … so then I’d actually have to go to confession for lying.
I find it incredibly difficult to deliberately break the rules. Bending them I can do, but only if there’s very little risk of getting caught. Which is not very Christian of me.
Still, it’s the reason I could never be on a reality show like The Bachelor or Love Island. There are other reasons, of course: a husband and two children being three very good ones.
But all of the schemes and games and trouble and lying and yelling and blackmailing … I’d spend the whole time on my knees.
Again, not what you’re thinking.
Every time I see a police officer, it’s all I can do not to throw myself at their feet and confess to anything and everything.
Of course, any time I actually do anything wrong they seem to catch me first.
Just last week I was done for talking on my phone in the car.
I know, I know. I’ve been repenting ever since. Technically I was on hands free, I just couldn’t hear very well so I was holding the phone in my hand. Which, I guess, means technically it was not hands free.
That’s certainly what the police said, anyway.
I didn’t even try to argue. I basically just threw the money in his face ($378) and then cried all the way home. Apparently, I can do the crime, I just can’t do trouble.
I’ve been done for speeding once in my life, and for very good reason.
I was driving my mother and two kids from Broadbeach to Byron Bay and it was mayhem in the car. Every single person felt what they had to say to me was of the utmost importance, and so they yelled simultaneously at me.
“Mum! I’m soooo hungry!” “Mum! Rainbow is still my favourite colour!”
“Ann! I’m playing croquet next Tuesday at 2.15pm!”
The result being that it was not until I saw Dreamworld’s Giant Drop that the giant truth dropped into my brain. I was going the wrong way. I was in Coomera, not northern NSW.
Trying to make up for lost time, I didn’t realise how far my speedo had spun until I heard the siren.
Result: I cried across two states.
Only once have I kept my composure under duress.
Running late (and don’t worry, I always feel bad about it – #catholicguilt), I might have drifted over to the bus lane.
When the officer pulled me over, however, I managed to talk my way out of a ticket by blaming an emergency trip to the vet.
You see, my passenger that day was one very elderly dog whose flatulence was so horrific that when it came to my excuse, I was actually prepared to follow through. As I feared he may have just done in the backseat.
The cop was happy to waive the fine, as well as the air, but despite avoiding a scolding, I still cried. Sweet Jesus, if you smelled it you would have too.
The silver lining in my aversion to trouble (aside from the fact that it’s prevented me from becoming a criminal) is that it’s been passed on to my children.
Swimming at the beach last week, a rogue wave washed my son’s retainer right out of his mouth. His $3000 retainer. Out of his mouth. Into the Pacific Ocean.
He was immediately in tears. He sensed he was about to be drowning in trouble.
My husband and I assured him that he’d done nothing wrong. This was a freak accident.
Of course, it was a little hard for him to believe he was being absolved. Primarily because my husband’s jaw was clenched as tight as mine the fateful day the dog dropped his guts.
After searching for an hour, looking for a needle in a haystack, a grain of sand in the ocean, we gave up.
As we walked back up the beach, downcast, my husband somehow spotted that tiny little piece of clear plastic buried in the sand. Alleluia! Praise the Lord!
While I had three thousand reasons to be grateful, what made me happiest was my son’s distinct distaste for trouble.
The teen years are going to be a breeze … until he gets his licence. Lord, have mercy.
Read Ann Wason Moore every Tuesday and Saturday in the