The Runaway

I may not be your typical missionary kid, or it may be that you really just don't know what the typical missionary kid is like. So many of us grew up under a microscope trying to be perfect so that we would not mess up our families' testimonies. Who are the most messed up kids in the world? Will all the MKs please stand up.

This may be overly dramatic and I realize that not all kids are the same, but I, for one, have messed up my entire life. You are reading the post of an MK that actually ran away from school in Africa. I am sure that my parents are proud of that fact!

All kids skip school, right? It seems to be a right of passage for teenagers in high school for the Senior Skip Day (maybe that was just a Florida thing), but I did not skip school on that day. No, I actually loved school. The summers were too long for me so I would load them up with summer classes. No, no, the first, last and only time I ever skipped school was when I was 4 years old and going to the pre-K class on our Fanda campus in Senegal, Africa. Not only did I skip out that day, but I lead my poor younger 3 year old sister astray as well. I had very good reasons though, had anyone thought to ask. What could a 4-year-old possibly be thinking? Surely nothing important, nothing worth listening to.

Had anyone cared to ask the two small children why they decided to run away from a class that was nothing but coloring and fun, here is what I would have said ... The class was just a bunch of strict rules, black and white guidelines, and no room for error. The so called "fun coloring" was all of us little kids sitting at a table and coloring worksheets the entire time. We had to have the entire page covered in crayon. I can still remember it (you will find that I was blessed/cursed with an amazing memory) — we could see the playground from our classroom, but instead sat there coloring away. A lot of kids like to color, but if you look at their pictures you will notice some spots that are still white, places that the crayon did not touch. That was a no no in our class, every bit of the page had to have color on it and no white was to be seen. Even when you do try to cover an entire page, the crayon seems to leave little specks of white where it just will not color over, so there we would sit, coloring and coloring.

One day my mom sent my sister and me out the door so that we could walk to class and instead of going I turned to my sister and hatched a master plan that involved bypassing the school house and just playing on the playground. Now that I am older I can see the error in my plan of playing right outside of the school, but at the time I was only 4 and did not realize what a terrible idea that was. My sister and I were on the monkey bars when we got caught. There really was no place to hide once they saw us because it was a wide open space. The teachers marched us into the house and past the little kids in our class to the back room behind the curtain where they proceeded to whip us, whipped us pretty good, too. Then we had to sit our little hurting butts down in the chairs with our friends and with tears dripping down our cheeks had to sit there and ... you guessed it, color.

I think that the worst part, to me, about that story is that my 3-year-old sister got spanked for something I talked her into doing. I carry a lot of guilt about that. I have to, simply because I remember it so vividly. That day taught me some very important lessons that I have carried with me throughout my life.

1. I cannot stand authority figures telling me how I HAVE to do something in order for it to be right, allowing for no grace whatsoever.
2. People that spank me without asking me for the reason I did something and give me no time to explain are unjust and mean.
3. If you are going to mess up you had better learn to run super fast. This is a lesson my sisters will testify to, because I never got into trouble with them, not because I wasn't there, simply because I would dash out of sight before our parents came in the room.
4. If you are going to do something dumb, insane, illegal or wrong, be careful who you influence or take with you because their pain will be on your hands. 

If you are wondering what our parents had to say about this little incident, they were never told.