Some Advice About Honesty

I'll never forget the time I told my parents I was going to Taco Bell and had to call them four and a half hours later to get picked up from Kyle's squad car-filled driveway. Would it have been better just to tell them that K-man's "p"s were out of town and we were going to throw a rager at his place? Maybe I should not even have gotten that far - good sense should have set in when Kyle gave money to his ex-con buddy (an old friend of the family) to pick up the beers. I'll never forget waking up sloshed and alone on Kyle's bed to the sound of a police radio and someone vigorously knocking on the door. I eyed the second-story window and thought better of it. They sent me downstairs with the rest of the busted, and we lined up to use the phone. The jig was up; it was time to come clean.

A few years of complete and Christian honesty later, I partook in a little gag with a group of friends. We called it the Senior Prank. Jamie stole a key to the school from an oblivious janitor that had left it hanging on the roll-a-garbage-can when she went in to clean the ladies' loo. We also broke the lock on a window just to make sure we would have a way in. Then, at two o'clock in the morning, we climbed in through said window and proceeded to douse the hallways with a few cases of ice-warm Miller Genuine Draft. We had planned well enough that we were unburdened by the task of opening each individual can; we stored the beers in lawn chemical sprayers, with the pumps - you know, the backpack thing. Then we spraypainted the lockers: Seniors '97. I know, not the most creative tag for a group of college hopefuls also hoping not to get caught. The next day was a stressful one, as the administration put the pressure on to catch the culprits. They announced that all seniors would take finals, which were usually waived in the final semester of senioritis, unless the perpetrators turned themselves in. We made it through a tough day of cutting diatribes by some of our most respected teachers ("I am personally offended by this act of utter disrespect..." - you can imagine), but had a big powwow after school in which it was determined that some, but not all, of us would turn ourselves in. Some students just had too much at stake. Allow me to assert that I, and the others that courageously but stupidly turned themselves in, am no longer in touch with the aforementioned. Cowards. But I shall let bygones be bygones and get to the point: we never should have told the truth! We had them by the nuts. We were all smart kids, had covered our tracks, and had not told even our closest friends; we had even raised our hands during that grueling day and pretended to express our outrage at the morally defunct individuals that could have done such a thing. The deans roasted us on a spit. We got mugshots, went before the judge, did all kinds of community service, and paid restitution. In the end, I got a hot girlfriend and the last ten days off of school.

So, if you see your neighbor's cat munching on your weed plant, do you call the dude? He could call the cops! Gray constitutes the many beautiful shades between indigo black and pearly white, and I am not sure that people who go spitting sensitive truths all over the place are much better off than those who guard and mete out the truth parsimoniously. After all, since you know he's gonna be fine, might it be funny just to watch kitty enjoy himself for a while?