Breaking bad.....

I can break rules now, too.

Well, I've always been a bit of a rule breaker, I think. It's just that now, as an "older" person, I can get away with it a little easier.

You know how it goes.  Younger people think we're non-entities anyway, so no one cares if we snap a few proclamations along the way, mainly because they're not paying attention to us any more.

What fun we can have during all this anonymity, right?

Turn my cell phone off as soon as I enter the library? I don't think so. Surely they mean they don't want to hear phones ringing all up and down the stacks, but my business depends on customers reaching me, even if I happen to make a stop to check out a book. So how about just setting it on vibrate? That's one of the delights of self-employment; I can actually have a life during the day, and my phone doesn't need to be turned off to make everyone happy.

Or "don't cross the solid white line" as I attempt to get from one side of the river to the other on the three-mile long bridge near my home. That would work fine IF drivers had much sense at all, which appears to be not only debatable but impossible. Maybe they're all under the age of 30 and learned to drive playing video games. So, in their minds, everything is a drag race, and no one EVER lets another car merge in to their lane, right? Apparently not.

Therefore, the white line and I are invisible to each other, as I cruise alongside the lane I really want to be in, and then I merge over when it's safe and I can manage it. That's the way the whole thing is supposed to work, if ONLY we assisted each other just a tad. 

I realize that breaking rules that also happen to be laws is a risky undertaking. I can personally attest to that one.

The trooper who pulled me over one day for speeding (on wet pavement to boot) asked me very politely if there was a particular reason I was exceeding the speed limit by about 20 miles per hour. I smiled, he smiled back, and I owned up to the fact that I had broken the law. But that's another mark of aging to perfection.

We know what we're doing while we're doing it. And as I break the rule, I implicity choose the consequences, too.

But life is a lot more fun now, I can tell you that.

If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.
Marilyn Monroe

Rules be damned....

It took me a long time to get to this point. Decades, in fact.

I grew up in a military family. Rules were king. Authority was to be followed. Period.

Questioning authority and rules, or convention of any kind, was taboo in my house. And then I discovered that the edges of rules could be pushed outward, and if done with a smile and good grace, those edges didn't crack. Convention can be questioned, if for no other reason than to learn why something is done one way when it no longer makes any sense to do so.

My predicament is that I come into contact with a lot of children. I stand in front of them and teach them things like how to get your best friend to stop gossiping about you in the locker room without simply punching her out. Or how to get adults to JUST LISTEN to you. (That's a tough one when so many parents and teachers act like they don't even LIKE kids. Go figure....)  So, it's a very thin line between respecting the rules, understanding that some of them are rigid, yet knowing how to stretch the rest of them with good judgment.

But as I matured into my own skin I learned how to do it. I discovered how to speak up. And I began to tap on the sides of the rule and other precepts, all with a smile. I discovered that I didn't have to actually BREAK it; I sometimes could simply ask for what I wanted.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that most people are more than willing to oblige me.

My 85-year old mother looks at me with horror when I do this in public. She has spent her entire life following the rules, and then I break out with a "But I would rather have it THIS way" statement in a business or other public venue. "It's not on the menu but I would like......" totally flumoxed her in a fine dining establishment one evening. Such simple requests. So easy to do, especially after experiencing success a few times.

It can't be a bad thing to teach kids, can it? I've done it with my own daughter since she was old enough to understand that Mom isn't really crazy. And my reward has come as I see her speak up for what she wants, rule be damned. We don't always get what we want but we are heard. Such things have changed the world, haven't they?

"The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives."

Anthony Robbins