Mother may I....

            One of the things I remember from my time at Millville Grade School many years ago was the system the teachers and administrators had in place for bathroom breaks. I guess when I got to Millville, I was supposed to call them restrooms instead of bathrooms, but old habits are hard to break, so it took a couple of years to make the change. Anyway, when I was in the first grade, my teacher, Mrs. Dilling, who had also been my Sunday School teacher, informed us that if we needed to use the restroom, we were to raise our hands to ask permission, and in addition to that, we should also raise one finger or two fingers in order to signify which bodily function was necessitating the break.

            I never really understood why it was any of the teacher’s business if a student needed to go number one or number two, or why they even cared, but that was the way things were done at Millville. I often suspected some students were embarrassed to announce to the entire class that a number two was imminent, and might have held up one finger as a decoy. I believed at the time, as I still believe today, that number two is best taken care of in the privacy of your own home, but when that wasn’t possible,  two fingers did seem to take a higher priority when Mrs. Dilling was selecting who would be the next to be excused. My old buddy Stinky Wilmont could be quite theatrical, waving two fingers while making grimacing facial expressions and a worrisome audible, all in hopes of gaining permission ahead of a less animated number one somewhere else in the room.

            I can’t recall the teacher ever denying permission, or even verifying if was actually a number one or a number two she dealing with. I think it was pretty well accepted that when a first grader decided he or she needed to go, it was going to happen with or without permission, and whether they made it down the hallway to the restroom or not. I don’t think anybody really wanted to take that chance, even if they suspected a number two was actually a number one, or even if they suspected it was a false alarm. I suppose it did serve to put us into the mindset of asking permission before we did anything for the next twelve years. Or fourteen, in Stinky’s case.

            I guess it also gave us the mindset most of us have carried through into our adult lives, though now, most of the time we are asking permission from the government instead of Mrs. Dilling. If you want to be a barber, or a beautician, or a member of about any trade or profession, you have to get permission and a license from the government before you can ply your trade. If you want to get married, or add a room to your house, or sell hotdogs on the corner, or even go fishing, the first thing you have to do is obtain permission from the government.

            Last March, a buddy of mine decided he wanted to build a home on some land that he owned. He had to get permission from the Department of Natural Resources, and the highway department, and the health department, and the building department. He finally received permission in October. It’s not that he couldn’t build a home on his property, but that he couldn’t build a home on his property without asking permission.

             For a supposedly free society, we sure seem to spend a lot of time asking our government for permission. Maybe it’s time for us to realize we don’t really need their permission for most of the things we do. Maybe we need to start collectively showing them one finger once in a while, but not to signify we need to go to the bathroom.