In my younger years, I had my moments when I behaved in ways I’ll choose to call “oppositional.”  I took my mom’s “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge after them” statement to heart.  I actively tried to not go along with the crowd.  I wanted to make my own decisions for my own reasons.  I didn’t like to do things I thought were dumb just to do them.  This manifested itself in several ways.  Some of them were fairly good, and some were just, well, oppositional.

For instance, I didn’t want to affirm my faith at the traditional Confirmation ceremony in my church just because it was the thing to do.  I refused to be confirmed with my class.  I did decide to be confirmed before we moved to Ohio the next year, because my Iowa pastor knew me and knew I’d completed all requirements for confirmation.  I decided I was ready to make the public confession.  Had I waited, my new church might have made me go through the process all over again, and I certainly didn’t want to do that.

My junior high physical education teacher must have been a saint.  She put up with a lot of guff from me.  She was also our neighbor.  I mostly refused to play volleyball, for instance, because I thought it was stupid. (I later lettered in volleyball in Ohio — thankfully, the coach there taught us to play it the right way, and it wasn’t just a ball slamming fest.  I also gave her a lot of hassles during the swimming portions of class.

My eighth grade history teacher, when we were learning the political spectrum, pegged me as radical.  At the time, I liked that, but as I’ve become a little more educated, I find I’m much more Moderate to Conservative in my beliefs.  Given the title of my post, perhaps, when I was an eighth grader, I may have been much closer to radical on the spectrum.

I’ve had a lot of tendencies to stay out of trouble — I found I always got caught, so it rarely paid to do something “wrong.”  That’s not to say I’ve always been a goodie two shoes either, but, mostly, I try to do the right thing, whatever that may be.  And sometimes, doing the right thing, is a little oppositional.