Instead of my usual narrative this week, I thought I’d spend this time reading some poetry I wrote to express my love for all the things I cherish. Maybe I’ll drag out a guitar and play you a ballad, something soft and slow about a nice thing that happened in Lewiston. After that, we can talk about our feelings.
Would you like that? A little poetry, a ballad and some sharing?
Stinking liar. Three paragraphs in and you’re not buying it at all. You’re wondering what I’m up to and thinking about calling the authorities.
Put down the phone, rat fink. It’s just that last week for me was very much like that. People kept doing the reverse of what I expected them to do. Last week was Opposite Day, seven days running.
It started when the accused criminal walked into the newsroom with a note of apology. His name was Billie and he just shuffled in, handed his note of remorse to an editor and said “see that the community gets this, would you?”
And when I called to ask him why, Billie was supposed to launch into some slick attempt at reporter manipulation. He was supposed to give me the criminal version of a sales pitch, but he did not. When I asked why he was apologizing even before his case went to trial, he said: “Because I feel bad about it.”
Opposite Day. Because let me tell you, criminals don’t apologize when there is no leverage in it. They just don’t do it. Oh, you’ll hear them blubber and spew their regrets the day they are to be sentenced. They’ll stand before the judge, pluck a nose hair to elicit a tear, and go on about how they wish it had never happened. How they wish they could take it all back. A con usually delivers a decent oration on sentencing day, because he knows as soon as he’s finished, the judge is going to bring his gavel down and with it, justice.
But this Billie character, he’s just 18 years old, you know. When’s the last time you heard any 18-year-old apologize for anything? He didn’t seem to have an angle. He didn’t have a lawyer, and he was fully aware that this admission to the press was a pretty solid piece of evidence for the fuzz to use against him.
Guts. Because this was a guy who had become a pariah overnight. This was a dog in a room full of cats. He had vandalized a cemetery, and it’s really no exaggeration to say that an entire community had come to despise him. Better to hide. Buy some of those toy eyeglasses that come with a fake nose and fuzzy mustache and try to go incognito. I would wager everything in my wallet that 99 out of 100 accused criminals would do just that.
But no. In a bold celebration of Opposite Day, this admitted vandal came forward and said his piece. He did so knowing he would likely be ripped to shreds by the mandibles of public opinion once his letter hit the streets.
And that’s what would have happened, if that week hadn’t gotten all soft in the head the way it did. Any other time, the Kangaroo Court of the Twin Cities would have brought him down. Bloggers would have lynched him in the online gallows, some using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to emphasize their position.
Facebookers would have declared him a fiend, creating special groups in which to condemn him and pressing the “like” button every time someone else did the same.
If it had been simply Ordinary Day, the confessed desecrater of hallowed ground would have been torn a new one, in the parlance of the vulgar, in coffee shops and bars, corner stores and office break rooms all across the county and into the next one.
Instead, the inhabitants of our local world seemed impressed. Nay, they seemed moved.
The kid’s fifth-grade teacher called me, did I tell you that? Six or seven years since she had him as a student, and this lady still thought about him from time to time. She was sad when she’d heard what he had done to the cemetery. She was proud when she heard that he had stepped up.
Brother Doug came to see me, did I tell you that? Bro Doug Taylor himself, in a spiffy new hat, came in to talk because he was ecstatic about what had happened. He was thrilled by the confession and hopeful that the boy could be saved.
The following day, the repentant hooligan stood before Brother Doug’s congregation of children and told them his tale of sin and woe.
“You could of heard a pin drop in the room as Billie spoke to the kids,” Brother Doug told me later. “He seemed thankful for the opportunity to share his story and encourage the kids to hang with a good crowd and to not make unnecessary mistakes that will affect their futures.”
And so we all spent some time talking about the power of forgiveness and a soul who is brave enough to ask for it. And every day of that week, I constantly scanned the rooftops around me because I was convinced this was all some Lifetime movie being surreptitiously filmed. All that sincerity, compassion and grace? Here, in the hot froth of downtown Lewiston?
Only on Opposite Day, the rarest of them all.
So, I go into this new week warily and with a restocked supply of cynicism. Getting a sincere apology from a man who has done a terrible thing is rare enough. Seeing him make a genuine turn for the better is rarer still.
If you don’t mind too much, I’ll just take a wait-and-see approach to this one.
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