Trav's Thoughts

We're counting down the days to 5 November 2009 with Peace Quotes.

“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” Mahatma Ghandi

Check the top of my side bar to your right for all the information you need to participate in this year's Blog Blast for Peace. Please consider joining us.


Take This Tune is a feature hosted by my pal Jamie at Duward Discussion. Jamie puts up a video prompt complete with lyrics to the song, and the task is to write something inspired by the title of the song or something in the lyrics.

This week's prompt is an aria from Gianni Schicchi. She's a teenager. She's in love. She's being dramatic at the top of her lungs. It's opera so you know things are going to get very, very complicated. Before it all goes to the hell in a hand basket, there is this glorious song pleading for daddy to understand. Unfortunately for her, daddy understands all to well.

Whos. This is a real tough one.

But I am inspired. I'm thinking about a time when I absolutely knew what I wanted to do was wrong. If I asked for permission, I knew for certain I'd be turned down. And if I was turned down, as I knew I would be, I absolutely would obey my mom. Once she said no, it was no and I respected that.

But I was 13. And varsity guys invited me to go. Varisty guys!

So I followed this principal...it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Where did we go? Twain Harte. To a cabin owned by the parents of one of the varsity guys. On a Friday night after a football game. I told my mom I was spending the night with a friend and he told the same story to his folks. Sorta true. I was spending the night and the varsity guys were technically my friends.

I didn't get drunk. Nobody did. It wasn't that kind of party. They had a pool table, pinball machines, and those table top arcade games...like Pacman. Remember those? They used to be in all the pizza parlors.

We grilled hot dogs and hambugers at 3:00am and stayed up all night playing games and doing guy stuff. It was great!

That's really what it was. It was like going to the pizza parlor after the game. Except it was about 3 hours out of town. And an unchaperoned overnight with a bunch of older kids. And I didn't have permission to be there. And I lied about where I was.

All of which my mom found out. Of course she did. Because I was a lousy liar and I felt awful the next day about deceiving her. I hated to disappoint her, and I had because I decided to ask forgiveness instead of permission.

I was grounded for a week. It could have been worse. But she confirmed that there hadn't been any alchohol and that it was just a team thing. She talked to the varsity guys who invited me.

You know what was worse?

Football practice. See, the varsity guys weren't impressed that I didn't ask my mom if I could go. And they made sure the coaches knew that I needed an attitude adjustment. And that's exactly what I got.

Mom grounded me for a week. My coaches ran my ass ragged for two weeks with extra laps and extra sled work and jump squats and 4 corners and 40/60/80/100 sprints. By myself. In full pads.

You know what? It's better to ask permission than forgiveness. At least you have a 50/50 shot at getting what you want when you ask for permission. The other way? Not so good.