I waste so much time trying to control the future by covering every aspect of its possibilities. How could I still not have learnt that IT S NEVER GOING TO TURN OUT AS YOU THOUGHT. This thing with the Scouts is so typical. It is time to try, finally, to live in the present. But then again, learning is all to do with applying experience from the past to anything coming up towards you. How can you not do it and surely it would be ridiculous if you didn't?

The Scouts. I rang four or five people around to warn them of this visit and discuss, at tedious length, burglaring in all its forms. I dragged a spare TV from one end of the house to the other so the building would seem full. At dusk I rushed around drawing and half-drawing curtains, putting on side-lights in some rooms, bright in others, turning on TVs to different programmes and having music playing in one place. Then arranging downstairs blinds so I could peer out unobserved. My son set up mentally to stand menacingly in macho pose in the most obvious and well-lit window as soon as we heard the sound of distant boyish voices.

We sat tense and alert for about three hours. Finally, although oddly in total silence, the outside sensor light snapped on. We sprang to our positions. In a short flicker, two, - TWO - ,small weedy Scouts with a depressed-looking 'leader' shot past and were gone into the darkness.
WTF? I had wasted two days pondering, planning and worrying about this. She had used the word 'troop'. A troop is large, it consists of many more than TWO boys. Boys of exactly this age and from this same small town had burgled my house and taken our cars the year before.

Am I a ridiculous overreactor? Or was I sensible under the circumstances? Or aspects of both of the above? It is a really exhausting way to be. Does all the thinking and arranging actually make much difference in the end? I have no idea. My son seems to potter through life without any real disasters. His lack of planning only causes various minor inconveniences and with anything vitally important someone else is probably involved too and they'll remind him, or do it, or whatever. Whatever - I should probably make more use of that word.
- posted by Iris @ 11/22/2003 01:40:00 PM comment