Responsibility Is A Concept That Is Learned...

Responsibility is a concept that is learned at some point in life by most people.

I vividly remember the day, back in 1953 when I was nine years old, and in the fourth grade at Burrill Elementary School when I realized what the word responsibility meant.

After the end of the previous school year, when I finished the third grade at St. Patrick’s Elementary School, my father moved our family into our newly purchased family home located on a street composed of hills that would level out and then climb again, which was called Oakland Avenue. Oakland Avenue was situated in the City of Lynn yet was on the boarder with the Town of Saugus, Massachusetts. This was the year I would be in forth grade, and it was my first year in a ‘public’ school where my instructors were not Catholic Nuns.

I still remember that morning in early spring when I had almost completed my first year in the public school, as I rushed down the sidewalk, that bordered Boston Street on my way to school. Back when I was a child living in Lynn, I never saw a ‘school’ bus. You walked to school or you took public transportation if a bus route was between your home and your school. There was no public bus route between my elementary school and my home, so I walked.

As I rushed down the sidewalk I noticed something moving inside a hedge a few feet away from me. As I neared the activity in the hedge I realized that the movement in the hedge was coming from a small, brown bird, fighting for it’s life, trying to free itself from being entangled in the hedge by a long string that was wrapped around the birds legs, and caught in the twigs within the hedge. It was spring, and in spring I was used to witnessing wild birds fly by me, carrying small twigs and pieces of string to build their nests.

I stopped and looked at the little bird, I heard its 'tweets' asking me for help. I knew that I didn’t have any time to spare; if I stopped to help the bird then I would be late for school, and I didn’t like to call attention to myself by being late for school. I had to make a choice and the choice I made was to stay, help the bird, and be late for school.

It took me several minutes to do, yet I was able to untangle the bird’s legs from both the string and the hedge. I watched it fly away. I remember thinking to myself that I hoped it had learned a lesson to be more careful with string while flying so close to a hedge.
What I didn’t realize was that I was the ‘one’, who had learned a lesson that morning, a valuable life lesson. I resumed my half running, half walking trek on to school, knowing fully that I was going to be late.

When I reached my school no one was in the schoolyard. I was late!
Again, I had to make a choice.
Do I tell my teacher what I did, which was a ‘good deed’ or should I be silent because telling the truth would seem to be a plea for ‘mercy’, it would be making an ‘excuse’ instead of just saying I was sorry that I was late.

My teacher was angry with me. I was only nine years old, and I took responsibility for my actions; I didn’t make any excuses for being late. I just told my teacher that I was sorry that I was late for school. I grew up a lot that day!

I can’t say for absolute sure what made me do what I did that day, choosing to help the wild bird, knowing that it would make me late for school. I can't say for absolute sure what made me just say that I was sorry for being late, and not making an excuse for being late by telling the story about what I did to rescue the bird in the hedge caught up in the string it was taking to a nest it was building.

Maybe what I did and said that morning, had something to do with the three years I spent being educated at St. Patrick’s Elementary, being taught by the nuns at that school. I know that attending St. Patrick's Elementary had a profound affect that had something to do with my attitude toward what I did then, and what I do in my life today. Whatever it was that shaped my personal ‘self’, whatever it was that made me do the right thing that day, and take responsibility for my actions, I am thankful that I turned out as I did.

Carol Garnier Dutra
This short story is a true story that happened to me.

Copyright © 2010/2011 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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