Why Law...?

“Don’t leave the school until I come to take you!” warned my mom for the zillionth time that day before she scooted back home after leaving me at my school. Monday had seen me leaving school to head home without the knowledge of any teacher or peer. When I reached home my mother had actually rung my dad up to “look into the matter!”. She was more worried about a five year old strolling on the streets to find a way home than about my 1st standard classes that I was, almost regularly, bunking. That day, even after evading periods that used to be only 35 minutes long I had the misfortune of compulsorily attending a lecture that was, I think, at least a century long. Those periods at school, I thought, were at least of 7 different subjects but this single lecture was only about “the incidences that could happen to lonely strolling five year olds on the city streets.”
I was warned that day that I just could not walk alone on any street! Huh!

Tuesday was even more boring for me…not only was I dropped at school again but I also had to find some other way home at recess; and this time evading the teachers and lobbying someone else in class to come with me so that I wont be “alone on the streets!”

I have a considerable influence on ordinary looking girls even today. It was the same in those days. I chose a girl on the second desk of my row to try the trick. I knew she would come with me with a little pleading and that she stayed close to my house. I gave my best and ALAS! She agreed and we flew again in recess without being spotted even by the gate peon !

When I reached home that day I was actually pasted, grounded and experimented with all sorts of things that ostensibly good moms and dads do. I did not understand what had I committed that was so serious. “I did not come alone!” I had kept protesting at my dinner time trial. It didn’t bother me that my mom was cross or that dad was worried. I actually thought the day had been far more thrilling and filled with challenges than the boring school where we were taught about road safety rules only to not be strolling on them!

What had bothered my parents this time was that “my presence” was actually so contagious that it could prompt even others to join me. My mom actually had to go to the girl’s place and apologize.

And now my mom’s line from “don’t come alone” had metamorphosed to “don’t leave the school until I come to take you.” “My god!” I had thought. “Now I actually had to design a way for mom to come and fetch me!”

At about the same time the next day my mom somehow got a message that I was sick and my teachers waited for my guardian’s arrival to fetch me. It was delivered by my senior [seniors were allowed out during recess.]

My mom arrived at school only to witness me running around with my peers in the middle of a chor- police game! When she thought of the message being delivered by my senior and not by any person authorized by school and also that my latest “Sachin Tendulkar” note book was missing she understood everything! Now that she had come I insisted her to take me home and she did!
The moral of the story is not that I am shameless and keep doing things even after being pasted or in spite of being kept grounded. It is that I can be good lawyer because I could find loopholes and arrange get aways in my mom’s rule even at the age of five! That is why I chose to be a lawyer!…

The Happy Prince