The Art of Rebellion

In the midst of my parents' big move out west, my mom's friends threw her a few going-away parties. At one of these parties, among the many memories mentioned by the people she's known for years, her friend and one of my favorite people in the world, Tamie, reminisced about something that pertained directly to me.

Flashback to my 7th grade year. My friend Hillary and I were waiting to be picked up from school when our moms showed up together. Now, it was any normal weekday so the fact that our mothers were together seemed a little odd. It wasn't until the doors were shut and we were both in the car that we truly understood the motive. Both moms turned around staring at us exclaimed, "Do you girls have something to tell us?!" We looked at our moms in awe, looked at one another, then back at our moms. We truly had no idea what they were talking about.

Instead of pursuing the conversation, we drove quickly out of the parking lot and toward a direction opposite of our houses. The car winded through the backroads and stopped abruptly at a bridge that I had seen at least a thousand times. Our moms got out and we followed, still without the slightest idea of what was going on.

They pointed at the bridge and as we got closer, we realized that it had been spray painted... And not just tagged randomly, but painted thoughtfully, with our names (and our boyfriends' names) ALL over it! We were just as shocked as our parents.

Honestly, I have no idea what kind of conclusion we came to our how we got our parents to believe that we had nothing to do with the tacky bridge (other than the fact that we were both scared of the dark and the bridge wasn't exactly a hop, skip, and a jump away from either of our houses). What I do know is that the bridge was painted back to its original state within a day (I think Hillary's dad called in a few favors), and it was never really talked about again until much later.

As funny as this story is now, it made me think about rebellion and what makes someone go out and paint a bridge or commit a thoughtless (or even illegal) act. I like to think my parents were lucky... The worst my brother and I really did was sneak out to TP someone's house. We did get grounded though, so it didn't happen again. Don't get me wrong, we did things our parents didn't know about, but nothing truly harmful and especially not illegal. I have to credit my parents for this... We never felt like we had to lie to them. We never really felt the need to do "stupid" things. I can only hope that I'm able to have the same relationship with my kids.

And for the record, Hillary and I really DIDN'T paint the bridge, and we still don't know who did (although we have a few theories). :)