Sometimes you feel the brush of the wings of the Angel of Disaster only after you’re safe. It happens in those moments when, in hurtling traffic, some idiot lurches out from a side street ahead of you and calmly, smoothly, you apply both the brakes and the horn in time to save everyone’s lives. Only afterward do you feel the flood of adrenaline, as your mind unfurls the ghastly picture of what almost occurred.
There are times, though, when you are the idiot who’s lurching out from the side street. You don’t think of yourself that way, of course. You think you’re judging the situation pretty well, and that your actions make sense — when in fact you could get creamed.
And this applies in areas of life that have nothing to do with cars or traffic.
My husband and I still shiver over an incident that took place when we lived in a fourth-floor apartment with a long, narrow balcony.
I was the idiot in this case. One day, with the doors open to the breeze, I noticed a pool of water on one side of the balcony. “Gee,” I thought, “I don’t want our toddler to get wet.” So I blocked her access to the water by putting a chair in the way. I had solved one problem, failing utterly to see that I had provided her with a way to get over the balcony railing. The panicked sound my husband made when he got home and saw my bone-headed, well-intentioned deed still gives me chills. It gives him chills, too.
This week a tiger mother of my acquaintance had something of the same experience. She’s been purring for weeks, ever since her high school senior won a spot in the Ivy League, and she wanted to thank one teacher in particular.
So decided to pick up a bottle of champagne. The boy could take it in to his teacher the next day, with a nice card. Bubbling with pride as she bought the hooch, she gaily told the merchant where both her son and the bottle were headed.
The man froze. “In that case …” he said slowly, “… I can’t sell it to you.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because giving alcohol to a minor is … illegal?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she laughed, “It’s not for him. It’s for his teacher!”
The man looked at her incredulously.
“You think it’s appropriate to give alcohol to a teenaged boy to take to school?”
Suddenly, she got it. What seemed innocent to her might set off cultural alarms. She’d heard the horror stories of teenagers losing their college places because of one dumb senior-year mistake, one party they shouldn’t have attended.
“I could imagine the headlines,” she told me: “Scandal Mom Buys Booze for Kid on School Bus.” She could imagine the letter from the famous school, withdrawing its offer.
“It never occurred to me that it might look like that,” she said to the man. “I guess I’ll take it to the teacher myself.”
As she walked away a little shakily, she could still feel the gust from those terrible wings.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
