Come Back To Bite You...

I don't remember getting caught. Last night at small group, we were discussing and recalling instances where we were caught doing something we weren't suppose to be doing. The topic was actually about "bad things catching up to you." A few people shared some pranks they tried, others told about the wilder side of life. All were caught by their parent's super powers. The same super powers most parents are endowed at their child's conception. The powers of deduction that are exhibited when your mother knows something you did which had no witnesses, and your father's x-ray vision. You know, the ability to see through B.S. As I listen to these recountings, I couldn't help but have this grin on my face the whole time. It is the same grin my father and brother use when they are bluffing at cards. For some reason every time us Motley's are up to something the left corner of our mouths can't keep the secret.

Lots of people had stories about getting caught, but in my mind I kept going from great story to great story... but they weren't about getting caught. I scanned my childhood, teen years, and college. The only time I remember being caught doing something was when Tyler and I turned ourselves in for stealing President Ray's Moses bust. And even then, we weren't caught. We turned ourselves in out of guilt, not of the crime, but that one of our professors who we respected was upset by the prank. We could have got away with it, no problem. Most of my early life I did exactly what I was suppose to do. So by the time I reached Jr High my parents trusted my so implicitly that I didn't have a curfew and they never grilled me about what I did. They just assumed I was behaving myself. So I sat in group smiling, thinking how funny it was that they were caught, but I was too good to get caught.

But the sad realization came after group. On the way home I got a call from someone I haven't talked to in about a year. I checked my voicemail and this girl left me a message that said something like, "Hey, I'm calling to get (friends) phone number. I know you don't want to talk to me, because you never return my phone calls, and you probably hate me, but could you call me back and give me this number..." and that's as far as I got. I deleted the message. I'm not going to call her back. How did she get my new number? How dare she call me just to be spiteful! She could have called any number of people for that friend's phone number. And the reason I don't ever call her back is she is always spiteful and mean to me when I do talk to her.

But it is because my freshman year of college, she liked me and rather than being a real friend and talking about it... I blew her off. Yeah, things catch up to you. And being that I could be very cruel and selfish in college when I wanted to be, I'm starting to fell the ramifications of that. I used to not care. But as I have be trying these past two years to be a better man, it hurts to think of all the people I hurt, and who I used to be when I was hurting them. And as much as I would like to decieve myself, the reason I'm not going to call her back is not that she is mean, it is because I don't want to look at who I was when I was with her. I would have rather been caught pulling a prank. I could face that. I'm not smiling anymore.