Being Right

When I was little, my family had a particular method of handling tantrums or other misbehaviors. If I was bad, I would be told to go sit on the step. This ingenious punishment, which is absolutely what I plan to use should I ever have kids of my own, serves several purposes. First, it removed me from whatever the negative situation was, allowing my parents to tend to my sister’s bruised arm, the mess is created, or whatever else. Second, it have me time to calm down and to think about what I had done. After some interval of time which loosely correlated to the seriousness of my misdeed, my mom or dad would come over and ask me “Why are you on the step?” and I would be expected to explain back to them, in a levelheaded manner, what I had done wrong, why it was wrong, and how sorry I was. Truth be told, I still take this approach whenever I get upset — I remove myself from the situation and wait until I’m calmed down enough to re-engage. Thanks, mom and dad.

On one particular occasion, I blew up big time at my mother. She was helping me build something with LEGO, and I didn’t like the way she had put the pieces together. “You’re doing it wrong!” I told her. “I’m doing it differently,” she explained, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not right.” We’d had an argument like this many times before. I was a stubborn child (or, really, I am a stubborn person). I proceeded to have a meltdown, crying and becoming impossible to handle. So, I was sent to the step.

My mom came over after several minutes, but unusually, she had something in her hand. It was a piece of red construction paper, and on it was a series of neat black lines drawn with my mom’a favorite pen, the uniball ultra fine. She’s especially good at drawing lines — I’ve been reminded a few times that she took a course for her design degree in college where they spent several weeks worth of classes doing nothing but freehanding straight lines.

I hadn’t noticed immediately, but when my mom gave me the paper I saw that the lines formed a maze. I vividly remember this piece of paper, since it shook my 4 year old mind’s understanding of the world. My mom sat down with me, peering at the maze.

“Try it,” she said. It was an easy maze, and I found the way through immediately. “Is that the only way?” she asked? “Yes.” I countered defiantly. She sighed and smiled together. “What about this way?” tracing a different, but perfectly valid way through the maze.

I had to give it to my mom — she had even been sure to make the two routes an equal length, so there was no argument to make about one being superior on some other grounds.

“Sometimes there’s not only just one way to do things, Ben.” “Yes, there is!” I exclaimed back. She left me there then with the maze in my hands, fuming and crying and trying to understand the world.