Oops

Second grade was a blissful time of life when there were little to no obligations and rarely any assignments I didn't complete in class. Homework was a stranger I wouldn't meet until later in life. The classroom where we learned featured decorative and inspiring posters and pods of short desks littered with plants we nurtured and pencil marks were our childish imaginations couldn't contain themselves. Our only responsibilities were to listen with our ears, look with our eyes and keep our hands to ourselves.

So, as you can only imagine, when we were assigned responsibility and were supposed to take home a worksheet to complete after school, it would follow that such a task might slip our mind with the sandbox full of friendly neighbors beckoning to us from the backyard.

It was a worksheet with a picture of a woman writing at a desk. I don't remember what the intended lesson was. I do, however, clearly remember slipping it into my ginormous blue backpack next to an apple I had neglected to eat at lunch and zipping the main pocket safely shut before flying out the door for fun.

First mistake.

Second mistake--lying to my teacher when she stood at the front of the classroom and asked us to take out the worksheet she had given us for homework the night before--the one I...lost. Blood rushed through my body at an accelarated pace and up to my mind, dodging frantic nerves that sent eruptions of panic to the depths of my conscious. I had missed an assignment. And rather than suffer the humiliation of work gone undone, I chose to suffer the consequence of a truth gone untold.

An excuse is a lie cleverly disguised in the middle of a herd of sheep, mildly grazing in the field of good intentions.

Years later I missed three quizzes in the first two weeks of a challenging accounting class in college.

Where was that innocent sandbox where I once placed the blame? Perhaps within its depths I would find the real loss--my mind.