When Bobs go bad.....a discretionary tale

I am frequently asked "Hey Bob, you seem like such a morally upright dude--you attend church regularly and teach fifth grade Sunday School, you don't cheat on your taxes (much), you haven't ever been "convicted" of a felony (watch "Stripes" with Bill Murray if you don't get this line), and you are married to a pastor--was there ever a time when you strayed and did something you regretted later?"  I immediately think of the time that a group of us were caught soaping the Logan Elementary School in Fairfield, Iowa on Halloween night when I was in 6th grade....here's how the painful lesson goes:

That particular Halloween was the first time that my friends and I were too old to go trick-or-treating, and we went out looking for something else to do.  We emptied our house of all the soap (I worry about my parents' supervision skills because I don't give out a new peanut butter jar unless the kids show me the empty one first, but they never questioned us about all the soap bars disappearing on Halloween) and walked the short distance to Logan, a band of six kids with bad intentions.  We quickly soaped all the bottom windows with clever youth sayings and pictures, and just as we were finishing an old man (he was probably about 55 like I am now but that seemed much older back then) they had assigned to school security burst out of a side door.  We reacted like any other group of deliquents would--we took off running at warp speed.   The guard (let's call him Barney Fife) hollered out for us to come back to him...most of us were about a block away by now with no intention of returning.  Incredulously, the closest kid to him (but still a half block away) stopped, turned around, and walked back to him.  The rest of us slowly followed him back, knowing that if we didn't this brown-noser kid would squeal on us and we'd be in worse shape.

Security Guard Fife pulled a notebook from his pocket and asked us for our names...the oldest kid in our group stated "Bart Starr" and even spelled it for him, winking at me while the old guy wrote.  I quickly declared "Dick Butkus", and my brother blurted out "Gale Sayers" (if you don't see the pattern here, you need to brush up on your knowledge of  NFL stars of the 1960's).  We thought we were looking good with our charade until, incredulously again, the brown-noser said and spelled out his actual name.  What a loser!!   Anyway....we finally confessed and gave our correct names, parents were notified, school detention was assigned, we had  to clean all the windows we wrote on (the good news was we had already applied the soap, so we just needed water and paper towels---that's truly finding the blessing as my wife always says to do), and we ended up learning many valuable lessons.  They are (in no particular order):  accept responsibility for your actions, follow rules, tell the truth, respect authority, blah-blah-blah....honestly, the most important lesson I learned was choose your friends carefully.....a wise man once said that the good choices he makes today are because of the many bad decisions he made in the past.....til next time....Bob