November 10, 2022
By Albert Garih
I guess we all have things we would rather have done or not done, said or not said, things we are proud of or not so proud of in our lives. I am going to tell about a time I am not too proud of. This happened when I was 13 or 14 years old. I hope that by telling about it, I will clear my conscience once and for all of that stain that still haunts me almost 70 years later.
I was in a Boy Scout group, and it was winter. It had been snowing, and logically, we were playing with snowballs. We were in the street, and a car came by. We did not notice that it was a police car so, as mischievous as we were, we started throwing snowballs at it. My snowball landed right on top of the hood of the car which braked suddenly, and the police officers came out running after us. I was able to escape their grip, but another boy could not. Obviously, they were after the one who had thrown that snowball at their car. But they caught the boy and they took him to the police station. I didn’t hear anything about it, until the next week, when we got together again, I noticed that the boy who had been caught was missing. We figured out that he had been expelled from our Boy Scout pack, but I was ashamed and afraid and kept my mouth shut.
To this day, I am not proud of my cowardice. I could have inquired about that boy and revealed I was the one who had thrown that snowball at the police car, but I didn’t. Perhaps, he would have been reinstated into our group, but I stayed silent, and he was not. Seventy years later, I am still thinking of that act and, although it didn’t have grave consequences, except that the boy had been expelled from our group, I am still not too proud of my behavior in that situation.
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