By D. Witte

Can one moment of childhood terror result in a lifetime of honesty? In recalling my first experience of being caught at pilfering comes the awareness that there is that possibility. Let me explain…..

I quietly, unobtrusively left the hospital room with a dollar bill hidden in my hand. Outside at the freshly painted curb, I tucked it securely under one of the “wet paint” signs. This simple act helped ease the pain of conscience which had been picking at me because of an earlier incident.

For weeks I had watched helpless at my son’s bedside as he recovered from a spinal cord injury which kept his body motionless. (Only a mother can know the agony of being unable to help her offspring in time of trauma.) The only thing I could do was be there, waiting on his every need and desire. So, when he recovered enough to be wheeled around in a wheelchair outside and wanted one of the colorful “wet paint” signs left by the painter, I was torn between a mother’s desire to please and an equally strong compunction not to take something which wasn’t mine. Ultimately, to his delight, I lifted the sign from the curb and offered it to him, vowing to make things right with whomever left it. My son laughed and scoffed, saying it was no big deal, probably seeking to soothe his own guilty conscience.

Did my act of paying for the sign stem from a childhood experience, which I now recall? A time when there was a candy machine in the corner of the gymnasium at our school which tantalized little girls’ and boys’ taste buds with sensations of creamy chocolate and crunchy nuts. Occasionally, my father would give me a nickel to spend during lunch hour, and I would rush back to school, deposit it in the machine and receive a sweet treat in return.

My father didn’t bestow his blessings on me quite often enough to my way of thinking so one morning when the weak kidneys of my youth called me from sleep before everyone else, I tiptoed to my parents’ bedroom to help myself to a nickel. The chest of drawers against the wall across from the foot of my parents’ bed was high and the coins dad had emptied from his pockets there the night before were barely discernible in the grey, pre-dawn light. The one-time adventure eventually became once a week, then even more often, or ten cents instead of a nickel. Then, one morning the only change on the chest was a fifty-cent piece. For a moment, I struggled inwardly whether to take it or leave it. But ultimately, my desire overcame my doubts, and I quickly retreated with it.

I was getting ready for school when I heard my father say to my mother, “I thought I had a fifty-cent piece in my pocket last night, wonder what happened to it.” I don’t remember my mother’s reply as the feeling of stark terror welled up in my body. Would he ask me about it? How would I answer? Did he suspect me?  Had he seen me sneaking into their room that morning?  Avoiding him I quickly left for school, vowing never again to take something that didn’t belong to me.

The memory of that experience doesn’t consciously come to me now, when questions of honesty confront me, but I believe that experience subconsciously keeps me in integrity now.

What do you think it was that caused me to react the way I did?  Was it conscience, as I’ve described it? Was it a little “Jiminy Cricket” reminder? Or was it my soul? Have you had a similar experience?