There but for the grace of God...go I. How is it I ended up here - in my own house with a cup of warmish coffee and a computer to write with - instead of on the streets, in prison, or dead? Have you thought about that lately? Think about all the times you got in trouble growing up. Some of it was typical kid-doing-dumb-stuff stuff, but I bet there were a few nasty near-misses as well. We all get in trouble, but what separates the people who learn from their near misses and "grow out of it" from the people who stay in trouble into adulthood and beyond?
Growing up, I maintained a steady ebb and flow between sinner and saint. Left to my own devices I was a pretty good kid, but it didn't take much arm-twisting from friends to get the mischievous juices flowing. The younger I was, the more susceptible I was to go along with whoever had the idea, regardless of how bad it was. Because I have good parents, I got in trouble for my various misdeeds and was able to learn where the guardrails were.
I still remember where I was standing in my old house when my mom laid the "birds of a feather flock together" adage at my feet. When explained its meaning I got my first glimpse into the way I could be influenced by others. She stressed I should be more particular about who I hang around with. Up until that point, fun was fun and anyone who wanted to play with me was a-ok. I remember resisting the idea at the time, not wanting someone else to have control over who I chose to be friends with. It sank in, though, and I avoided playing with that boy much after that. That was a "nurture" moment, as opposed to my inherent attraction to trouble, i.e. "nature". I read once that despite the obvious influence our peers have on our behavior, it's our natural attraction to those types of peers that really determines what path we end up taking in life. In other words, if I was born with a preternatural yearning to be perceived as "cool" and I grew up in an era where smoking was considered cool, my peer group wouldn't be the ones influencing me to smoke; rather, when I reached an age where that started to matter, I would naturally gravitate toward a peer group already consisting of smokers.
Sudden transitions like changing schools or moving away are also breeding grounds for changes in behavior, though the changes aren't always bad. My parents gambled twice on changing schools with me mid-year, and both times yielded an improvement. We also moved twice - once in the middle of 5th grade and again just after 8th - but those had opposite effects. In 5th grade, I was deep in the process of figuring out who I was. I had some good friends who I sometimes accidentally punched in the face, played baseball, and had a pretty nice routine going. Then, halfway through the school year, my family moved across the state when my dad got transferred to another office. I remember being excited, but I didn't take to it well. The kids were different. They were less innocent. They had rough edges. And being shy and new attracted unfamiliar amounts of attention. I don't know if it was to avoid getting teased or to try to fit in, but I perpetrated all sorts of schoolyard "crimes" that were out of character even for me. It didn't help that I was changing schools again at the end of the year to go to middle school, which is a notoriously tumultuous period for American kids, and maybe I figured I had nothing to lose. Things didn't improve and halfway through 7th grade, my parents took their second gamble and changed me to a different school again.
When I try to assess myself honestly as a person, I default to the assumption that I've always tried to be good. But I'm not sure that's accurate. At my 8th grade graduation, one of our classmates recited a poem describing everyone in our grade as we sat on the brink of moving to high school. "Tim Campbell is good at knowing what's right..." is how I was described in the poem. That made my parents happy. But looking back, I feel puzzled. Everyone at this school had only known me for 1.5 years up to that point, and my experience/behavior between 5th and 7th grade was so bad I had to endure the middle school equivalent of being relocated on assignment to an outpost in Siberia. Hardly a ringing endorsement of someone who "knows what's right". The memories I have of this time are almost all from 5th or 8th grade. Changing schools from 5th to 6th, and then again halfway through 7th, means the interim year and a half is a blur. The 7th-grade switch marked a turning point and I think even I realized something had to change. I didn't want to be getting in trouble all the time. And despite my promise to myself to stay honest, I'd slipped into a retched streak of dishonesty in an attempt to mitigate my constant punishments. I think I took the 7th-grade swap as a sign that things needed to improve or else, so I was already in a good frame of mind when we up and moved again the following year.
The move in the summer before high school was a gleaming contrast to our other move. It was a sigh of relief, a clean slate, and some much-needed closure of that chapter in our lives. Maybe I was just getting older and maturity was taking over, but I wanted (most of) my choices to have defensible outcomes for once. I still did dumbass things, like getting caught driving my friend home before I had my license. He lived less than half a mile away. My parents were away with my sister in Boston. Until they pulled into the street behind me as I pulled out of the driveway. I didn't even think to look in the rearview to see them tailing me the entire way.
Occasional blips aside, I eventually came around and left all the nonsense behind. But that makes me wonder...was avoiding getting into deep, irreconcilable, department-of-corrections trouble the result of sheer luck, or would my natural proclivities always come into play and steer me back onto the road before I ended up aflame in the ditch? When does a fortunate bounce lead to "phew, never again!" instead of "I didn't get caught, let's ride this train to glory!" As a parent, it terrifies me to think that no matter what I say or what example I set, my children's natures will ultimately dictate whether or not they stay on an upward path. I've seen how identical upbringings can produce polarized outcomes. I guess all I can do is cross my fingers no one gets into too much trouble.