COOKIES RULE by Dorothy-Jean (Dody) Christian Chapman The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

I learned this geometry rule early in life, and I began to practice it a lot in kindergarten. Oh, I did not draw lines with a ruler and crayons or one of those oversized pencils on my newsprint paper. Nor did I spout off any proofs of my knowledge and use of this rule. I simply lived the rule every day, whether a school day or not. The rule served me well; not my clothes, but me. My mama always wondered why my clothes bore swaths of dust or mud right down the center front. Even my knees and red sneaker toes had remnants of the dirt. Mama just said children had to eat a peck of dirt before they reached adulthood. I was not eating dirt, I was biting the dust! At age eight, when walking across town to the library, I took a direct line of approach trespassing through neighbors yards, over fences, gardens, and under porches. Going to the grocery store for Mama meant traveling past some mean dogs, but I always tossed them some of my whole wheat bread crusts with just a whiff of peanut butter to quell the lonely beasts. They eventually expected my arrival and did not bark or gnash their teeth in hopes of the few crumbs they knew I carried. Now the rooster in one persons yard was another story. That noisy guy always tried to flop me, so I removed my jack-shirt and fended him off like a bull fighter to avoid his spurs and feathers. He did get me once, though; but I did not blame him. I was in his yard. So I told everyone the scratches came from a tree that attacked me. My direct journey to and from school every day presented only two obstacles: The border fence of the junior high school field and the back fence of the elementary school yard. The junior high fence was an easy to climb, chain link fence. How convenient for my daddy to buy a house which bordered the junior high school. A quick run across the junior high fields brought me to a town street, a friends yard, and then the elementary boundary fence. All I had to do each day was shimmy under the fence on my belly, and there I was. No crowds to slow me down along the paths on the sides of the road leading to the front of the elementary school. I slithered under that back fence and sported dust each day for nearly five years. Nothing was ever discussed about the state of my clothes during parentteacher conferences. Perhaps my teachers expected dirty clothes because of my tendency to perform acrobatics, especially handstands and front rollovers, on the packed dirt playground. I guess I had no modesty in those first few years. As I

aged I began to wear shorts under my dresses so my underwear would not show when I was upside down.

Somebody, probably my fourth grade teacher (that was my worst year), reported me to the office in the middle of my fifth grade year. If it was my former teacher, she must have looked out her classroom windows and spotted me racing toward the buildings, trying to avoid detection by skirting the few trees along the fence line on the way to the front of the building complex. I knew I was breaking the school rules by following my own rule, otherwise I would not have been so secretive about going to the front of the school. But I had outwitted everybody for five years; the five most formative years of my education. I was the queen of the covert! During these five years, I had trespassed hundreds of times. In church I prayed for God to forgive me my trespasses. After all, the Lords Prayer spoke directly to me. And I felt somewhat redeemed when I prayed in this manner. But at home, in the darkness of the bedroom I shared with my baby sister, I felt that I was simultaneously getting away with something and also being forgiven when I talked with God. Now, that created a real conflict in my frontal lobes, the seat of reason and executive function. Art and geometry provided a simple solution to my logistics questions, but school rules tried mightily to bind me to a different plane. Now that I had been caught, supposedly by my fourth grade teacher, how would I handle myself? I had learned to be the maven of mavericks. Getting caught stung, but I decided to play the school game.for a while. I played the game, the on-the-path-beside-the-road-round-about-route-toschool game, for about two months. I perceived no one was looking, so I ducked over and under fences again for one week before I was brought down by the principal who met me at the trees on the way to the front of the school. (Do you think the dusty streak down my front gave me away for one week?) Needless to say, I was assigned extra class work after school. I played by the rules again for two weeks before going the direct route again. This time, my parents angrily confronted me about a phone call they received from my principal about what I had done. Apparently, I was to stay after school with my principal for a special after school session including my teacher and some other kids. I thought if it involved school work, it would be a cinch. I was the fox and the Gingerbread Girl all rolled up in one!

Since I was to stay after school on the appointed day in my own classroom, I waited with my fifth grade teacher rather sheepishly. Later, three sixth grade toughs showed up and took seats on the far side of the room. These guys were known for stealing, fighting, and just plain being dumb. I was not like them! Why were we all together this afternoon when I could have been ducking under the school yard fence? Then the principal arrived. He began by making us stand up in the front of the room

and state why we thought we were meeting after school. One of the boys was picked to talk first. He had stolen pencils from his teacher. Then it was my turn. I played the game and told the truth. I had no idea where this session was going. After each of us had confessed to our offenses, the principal announced that we would be writing several letters to tell of our crimes and indiscretions, and offering our deepest apologies. One letter would go to our local school board. (Well, that was OK, I did not know them). One letter would go to our parents. (Well, that would earn me a sound spanking; scary). Another letter would go to whomever we had offended. And the last letter would be framed and hung in the main school hallway for all teachers and students to read. That scared me and embarrassed me before the letter was even written. I felt prickles of goose bumps rise up on my arms, neck and head. I was mortified. The fox had bitten me and continued to chew royally into my backside. That was not all. Our principal went on to instruct us to create a rough draft in pencil first. That rough draft would be completed to his and my teachers satisfaction. We would all stay after school until the last kid completed a decent penciled rough draft in correct letter form, including every infraction, every name of those institutions or adults or other kids who had been harmed, a sincere apology, and a promise to follow the school rules. We were also to ask forgiveness of God. When all drafts were complete, we were then to write the three or more letters we owed in pen, in cursive, and with no mistakes. Mistakes meant rewriting. My Gingerbread Girl was being chomped on piece by piece. I felt crumby. After five years of breaking rules, I had finally come to the fence. I neither went over nor under. I adopted a Gold Standard. Point A to point B only

applied to certain projects in life, and no short cuts from now on. The path by which we learn to play by the rules may be easy for some and is usually established by the fourth year in life. A hard-core cookie, as I was, needed shame enough to rattle the basic ingredients of my recipe.