Just Tell Me the Rules Already!

A Surprising Confession

You wouldn’t guess it to look at me… or even if you followed me around for a bit and observed the things I leave disordered on what I deem the fringes of my life… but I crave order. Not in some OCD need for my sock drawer to have every pair of socks with heels pointing west and color-coded in the order that those colors appear in the dictionary… rather in a deep desire to understand the rules of every situation.

There Must Be More to This

As a kid I sensed that there was a secret order to things that, if discovered, would make everything run smoothly and without conflict. Learn the rules. Follow the rules. And everything will be harmonious and peaceful. I wanted to know what those rules were… badly.

A Possible “Why”

It may or may not have anything to do with my slightly chaotic home growing up with sibling wolves and a keen awareness of the chaos of my own heart… pushed and pulled and tricked again and again by my own selfish and lazy instincts. I felt like knowing the rules for every situation would give me a defense against the deceit of my own heart, and the chaos caused by my siblings and parents who were obviously struggling with the same.

With Age Comes… Confusion?

Aging into public school only exacerbated the situation. I could anticipate the chaos of my family, since I was accustomed to them, but school and teachers and administrators, like janitors and principals and bus drivers, complicated my pursuit… so did being told to hold my tongue every time I tried to ask for help in figuring out the rules. The results were often comical.

Memory… a blessing and a curse

Now, I remember my childhood rather keenly. I have many memories that date back to my days of being unable to talk or walk. Interestingly enough, almost all of these involve a moment of what felt like chaos to me as I worked my little mind to understand what was happening and what the right response to it should be.

Every time someone grew angry with me for violating some rule that I didn’t know about, my heart would fume with frustration and scream, “Just tell me the rules already!”

A couple examples.

Who but the X in Umbrella?

We were being given a spelling test… whatever that is… and were told to write down every word the teacher said. Believe it or not “umbrella” was one of those words. Honestly, I can only think it was a cognitive exam to test our limits and rank us into learning streams going forward. For who in their right mind gives a first grader “umbrella” on a spelling test. We had enough trouble with CAT and DOG.

Well, anyway, I look at the paper of the kid next to me and realize that I have forgotten to put the X in the middle of “umbrexlla” so I quickly add it lest my ignorance be exposed for all to mock. Suddenly, the teacher grabs up my paper and begins marching around the room waving it about and shouting “Andrew Sargent is a cheater!” over and over an over again.

I remember thinking that the timing could not be coincidental… it must have something to do with me looking and adding that X. The problem was, I didn’t know what a test was… so I had no sense of the rules for it, and I didn’t know what a cheater was. I sensed it must be a bad thing the way she was carrying on. My secret hope to this day is that none of my classmates understood either and all imagined that I was receiving some well-deserved praise.

The Art of Cognitive Dissonance

Around the same time, I was in an art lesson. The teacher went about tossing construction paper onto our desktops in what seemed a bit of a snit. My paper hit my desk and flew off to some unknown location. I rose from my seat to find it. The teacher screamed at me to take my seat. I tried to tell her I lost my paper and she told me to hold my tongue. This happened a few times before I gave up and sat mindlessly at my desk. Then the teacher came by and yelled at me for not doing my work. She asked where my paper was. I told her what happened. She screamed at me for not telling her or getting up to find it. My little chaotic heart was flummoxed… “Just tell me the rules already!” then added, “And stick to them yourself too!”

Multiply these by a thousand and you’ll get a sense of my entire childhood.

A Montage of Frustration

A desk full of rotting lunch leftovers because I couldn’t figure out what to do with them and was yelled at and told to go back to my seat and shut my mouth every time I tried to ask. Discovering that many of my classmates were malicious… that friends weren’t really friends after all… that some of my teachers were just plumb mean… often to the very kids who needed a little kindness the most. Discovering that while I understood that the letters in words were signs for sound, my class was being used as guinea pigs for sight reading experiments and being punished and berated for trying to discern the phonics of our written language. And yes our language is phonetic… but the rules of those phonemes are more complicated than A is for Apple.

With Age Comes Even More Confusion

As I aged, “Just tell me the rules already!” began to morph into something deeper… “Just tell me the why behind the rules already!” I was ready to follow the rules, but my heart needed to understand. I sensed that it would be easier to follow the rules once I understood why these rules were in place… what would happen if we didn’t follow those rules, what blessing there would be if we followed them. I wasn’t a rebellious kid looking for loopholes or escape hatches. I was looking for moral and ethical anchors to bring harmony to my life in every venue.  

Chesterton’s Fence

I feel like I have always understood, even if only on an intuitive level, that things existed the way they did for a reason and that understanding that reason would keep me from allowing my emotions to run away with my life and shipwreck my existence. I was working Chesterton’s fence before I knew who Chesterton was. Which is not unlike the old joke about removing a fence that you think was meant to keep you out only to discover that it was actually there to keep the volatile twenty-five hundred pound bull IN.  

 And, believe it or not, this is where Marxism comes in.

Which is coming up next.

~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD