thoughts, words, deeds

asking for trouble

Prompt: What do you consider "trouble", and how do you stay out of it?

With great skillful skill and with great speedy speed. Well, maybe not. First off, I don’t necessarily stay out of trouble. I am willing to get into sticky situations if that’s where my conscience leads me without counting the cost. But let’s go back. Trouble is negative consequences of actions. For example, my four year old nephew Eddie is always getting into trouble. He’s not a mean child, he’s just curious and sneaky and more willing to ask forgiveness than ask permission and be denied. He is constantly getting into things and getting out of things and running down the road on his own because he can open doors and doesn’t understand that fences around the yard are there for his safety and not for climbing practice.

So, the minute he chooses to step outside of the boundaries that his parents have set (for his own protection, mind you, even though he’s young enough that he doesn’t understand that fully) he is in trouble.

Trouble can also catch up to a person. For example, when I was in college, I got nervous one night as I walked home from school at about midnight down dark streets (I’d been at the library studying and lived about four blocks from campus) because that kind of behavior is asking for trouble. I swore then that I’d always use lighted pathways if I was going home late at night.

I’ve also done stupid things that could have landed me in trouble. For example, one time as I walked home from the grocery store (again, college student—it was only about six blocks from my apartment and I needed food) some guy in a pickup truck stopped beside me as I walked and offered to drive me and my five bags home. I didn’t know him. I got in the pickup anyway. After, I started thinking about what I’d just done . . . well, that’s another thing I don’t do anymore.

So, I try to stay out of situations that could lead to trouble and follow my own rules to keep out of trouble, but I am not afraid of negative consequences of my actions if I do something I feel was the right thing to do. So, in that way I court trouble. There’s just too many ways I use the word to say I stay out of it.