I remember frequently as a principal, an assistant would come in and explain to me that there was sort of incident outside. One of my favorites was when "the fourth graders blockaded the playground with snowballs." The assistant announced this and indicated that she had rounded up the perpetrators and they were waiting for me. I looked outside of my office and there sat 10 fourth grade boys. My imagination ran wild for a moment. I imagined children with bunkers and an arsenal of snowballs, reigning cold ice chunks on any student who dared cross their vision within the range of those deadly fourth grade arm-cannons. I looked at Luke, all 4 feet 6 inches of him and wondered what damage that 55 lb frame could do with wet snow in his hands. Of course, I called him in first.
Luke was not a stranger to my office. He knew the drill. He recognized that I would call each child in individually until I heard every version of the story. From there, he knew I would pick the common pieces and reconstruct the events for them until I found a close approximation to reality that we could agree upon. Luke explained that they had rolled large balls of snow on the ground until they became just as big as him. They rolled them until they could roll them no more. Many of them ended up in the swings area.
I called in more of the boys. Amazing that this incident had no girls. The kids smiled as they told of running the balls around until they became huge. These were the days before "bigly" became a thing. They talked with excitement as they shared their creations. Eventually, I walked outside. There they were. Eight large snowballs, nearly four feet a piece. Four of them in front of the swings and four of them scattered around the playground.
George Costanza taught us, it's not a lie if you believe it. Our children take cues from our leaders. We teach children to be honest and truthful by modeling these actions and expecting them to be honest in their behaviors. I wonder how different it will be as our children learn from our leaders that it is ok to double down on distraction. I wonder how much harder it will be when our students learn find an alternate reality and stick to it. What would have happened outside if the children kept saying, we were just standing by the wall. The assistant is nuts. Those large snowballs, no idea how that happened. All they would have had to do is whisper to each other, we were by the wall. What was in fact a funny story, would have been a miserable and eventually inconclusive investigation.
The reality is many of us have hearts filled with integrity. We expect to tell the truth and we expect to hear the truth. We may disagree with each other's positions, but we respect that it comes from our perspective of the truth, our perspective of the needs, and our hope to make something better. Many of us are like Jerry Seinfeld, and we can't pull off the lie, even when we want to. We hope to guide our children, and our leaders, that it is only through acting with integrity, we will accomplish what we want in life. Eventually, even George Costanza discovers that if he were to do the opposite of what he does, he may lead a better life.
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