The Time I Disobeyed

I was thinking today about something that happened when I was a boy, maybe around 11 years old.

My elementary school was across town from where I lived. Driving directly between my house and school took about half an hour, but I normally took a yellow school bus.

I don't remember why I didn't take the bus that morning, and I don't remember where my brother was, either. I do remember that I was traveling unaccompanied to school. I think I was supposed to take a cab, and I suppose that an adult would have called it for me.

But that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the commuter train that stopped behind my apartment building. I'm pretty sure that I had done it before, and I very much wanted to take it then. My mother insisted that I was not doing that, though, and that I was going to take the cab when it got there.

When the time came, I went downstairs, and I took the train.

I actually had to take the train to one station, walk a short way to another station, and then catch another train. It took longer than the cab would have.

When I got to school, the grown-ups were angry in that relieved way that I only really understand now that I'm a parent, too. They sat me down on a sofa in the school office and demanded to know why I had disobeyed and done something so foolish.

I couldn't tell them. I didn't know. So all that I did was sob uncontrollably on the sofa in the office, saying something about "the pressure", over and over.

I don't know why I did it. I don't know what "the pressure" was, either. I wish that I did, though: it was probably important.