Journey of the Emmons: How I Tattled on My Six-Year Old Self

My little sister and I were very opposite growing up. She was active and social to the max. She could instantly become best friends with random people she met at the grocery store. I was a little more reserved and had the ability to stay in my room all day just reading a book. My contentedness to stay still and quiet for the day was not my sister's style and unfortunately led to her often playing by herself. AKA getting into mischief. I can't remember exactly how old we were (around 4 and 6 years old) when she started learning how to write her name. On everything. Except, it wasn't quite her name. For some reason O's and H's must have been the easiest letters and the result was HOHOHO. Much to my parents chagrin, paper was not worthy of this new found name business and it appeared in the strangest places.

My poor dad found it on his wood workbench in permanent marker.

Then my mom found it in ballpoint pen on their headboard.

My parents were at a loss as to how she had so much unsupervised time to accomplish these masterpieces.

It was like she was some kind of Christmas/Santa ninja. Spreading Christmas cheer even in July.

She must have had mad skills to know when to leave her calling card.

Hanging out in rafters.

Or under and behind beds.

The other mystery to my parents was how she got her ninja tools. Where were all of these permanent and damaging writing utensils coming from? No matter how high or tucked away, she found them.

None of this was too concerning to me and my six-year old life. My stuff was fine...or so I thought. I had a lock on my door to keep her from getting into my things.

But one fateful day I left it unlocked and the Santa Ninja struck. For some reason, the Santa Ninja decided that it would be appropriate to label all my things with the only letter of my name she could write: L. I am sure Santa Ninja thought she was being very kind and that I would be so happy for this act of labeling. I, of course, was horrified.

I went crying to my parents. I expected justice. Instead my parents started explaining to me about how little Santa Ninjas are too young to know better and that she will be told not to do it again.

I went back to my room indignant. Where was the lifelong time-out? Where was the "we are disappointed talk"? The "no more candy for you ever!" declaration. I pouted and mulled over these things for quite some time while holding my electric piano (the only thing unscathed). If only she would do it again. Then she would have to know better and be punished.

And that is when I had a most horridly evil scheme pop into my head. It was so perfect, so schemey, so easily executed that any conscience I had once had was squeezed out by the shear ingeniousness of it.

I would copy the Santa Ninja's M.O. and write the fated HOHOHO on my most prized possession (in non-permanent pencil of course) and then tell my parents it was the Santa Ninja's fault. Muhahha!

I went out into the garage and copied the Santa Ninja's handwriting off of the workbench.

I worked up some tears for about a half an hour. It took some work but after purposely remembering how much injustice had been sent my way I found the proper sadness to induce tears. I took my piano and, making sure to hold it so my parents could see the offense, I approached as pitifully sad as possible.

My pitifulness and my forgery were convincing. My parents were off to do the grounding for life with a sprinkle of "so disappointed" jargon. I had done it! And for around .5 seconds I felt an uber sense of accomplishment and mastermindedness.

The glee was very quickly and rudely interrupted by something I had totally forgotten about; my conscience. It snuck back into my brain and thoughts and whopped me in the head.

Suddenly I remembered I had a soul. A tarnish-able soul. Oh, and a heart. Which I was pretty sure now had some blackish, nasty blemish directly from my evil scheme.

At first twinge of guilt I resorted to blaming my conscience. "Aaaand where were you before I acted out my evil scheme?" I accused. "What kind of conscience lets the heart get black and then reminds you of how awful a plan is? This is all your fault. You and your work-after-evil deed policy."

But then I remembered that my mom had explained that it gets easier and easier to do one bad thing after another because you dull your conscience. Sometimes it gets so bad that guilt isn't a zinger, its just a bland thing easy to ignore. In my six-year old mind the only logical explanation for the day's events is that I was starting to become the person my mom had told me about. Soon I would be doing all sorts of terrible things without even thinking a spat about it. Yep. I was well on my way to becoming the worst thing imaginable. A robber.

I lamented my fate as a future woman of crime unable to control her evil stealing impulses because I had stupefied my conscience and ruined my soul. I would probably have a hideous gold tooth or two.

Unless....

That is how I ended up telling on myself. To save me from a life of crime I went to my parents and in great detail (that probably came out in weird spurts of random words) told on myself. I don't remember what the punishment was, just that it didn't seem enough to completely prevent me from a terrible future. I resolved from that day forward to make my conscience my best friend and never ignore it (if only one could always keep such resolutions all the time). I do not yet know how to master that.