When Even Minuscule Amounts of Power Go To Your Head... - By Matty Jacobson

I’m such an advocate for anti-bullying because I am certain the act of humiliating a young person breeds an adult who becomes a power-hungry position-seeker.

I want to share with you a very short story, so there’s no need to fear boredom. But, as about 50 percent of my stories go, there’s a moral or two involved.

First, I would like to publicly admit something I did wrong: At the Homecoming Dance, I pulled a stupid college prank. In fact, at the time I was just trying to be silly and entertain my date. But the prank went horribly wrong.

For those of you who attended, you noticed the vases filled with pebbles, water, flowers and lights. I don’t know why, but I thought it would be funny to turn off the light and place it elsewhere. And no, I didn’t steal it—because frankly I didn’t want it.

I know. When it comes to off-the-cuff pranks involving random things I encounter, I’m actually not that creative.

Now I’m not proud of what I did. I screwed with someone’s attempt at making a romantic water feature, and for that I deserve to (yes, here comes a Skewed Review) set up every feature at every dance and then clean up after the rowdy college students from now until I graduate.

At the rate I’m going, graduation should be around 2030, and that’s if I do well.

A very concerned party planner/college chick/student government type approached me after my little playtime. I’m not exactly sure if she’s a member of student government, but I recognized her.

She was very nice to me when she asked, “Did you just take the light from that vase?”

I was caught. I returned to look for the light. Unfortunately for all parties involved, I had placed the light in a place where nobody could really find it, especially since the light traveled from the spot I initially placed it. I conveyed my apologies to party planner girl, told her I was just pulling a stupid prank, and then offered to pay for the light if it wasn’t found.

So my date and I went off on our way as I started secretly praying that the light wasn’t worth too much.

If this is where the story ended, I would give party planner girl five out of five days of rest and relaxation for handling a silly college man with dignity. She hadn’t really gone out of her way to embarrass me, and when it was clear the light was nowhere in the vicinity, she dropped the subject.

But, suddenly, as my date and I walked to the fountain, a campus security car drove right up the sidewalk to us.

Yes. Party planner had called the cops on me.

Now this particular Skewed Review could easily go in three directions. I could have chosen to focus on stupid college students (like myself) who get silly kicks out of doing stupid things. I could have also focused on our extremely efficient campus security. I mean, after all, the response time was less than five minutes.

But instead I want to focus on positions of power and how people use them.

Party planer girl is just one example of a person who takes her position so seriously that she’s willing to go to the extreme to flex her power biceps. It could have been very easy for her to ask me for my name and number so I could replace the now lost light. She could have even asked me to leave the dance. But instead, she used the full strength of her position to summon security to punish me for my heinous crime.

This brings me back to my very first statement.

I think people who have been demeaned or bullied in some fashion during their younger years may tend to seek careers where they, in turn, can become the punishers.

My wonderful father, a man who started as a beat cop in St. George and then worked his way up to a sergeant at the state level, always told me he could tell which officers were bullied as children. They were always the ones writing tickets instead of warnings and citing high school kids for curfew rather than just telling them to go home.

My fear is we are treating people so badly that those who are the brunt of our actions are holding onto those feelings until adulthood. Those once traumatized people then become officers, teachers, government officials and so on.

When these people, who now hold positions of power, come across someone like me (who most likely reminds them of some petty bully from their childhoods), then suddenly they summon the powers of Greyskull and rain He-man hellfire down upon us.

Do I blame party planner for treating me like I just murdered a littler of puppies and then smuggled a pound of heroin in their tiny little corpses into Mexico? Of course not. She was protecting her hard work, I’m sure. Yes, I do believe she went overboard because she took my stupid prank very personally, but it really was me who set the whole thing into motion.

My new review for party planner is this: Five out of five days of rest and relaxation. Oh, and she also gets an army of manicurists, cosmetologists, hairdressers and massage therapists. Not because she needs them by any means (she was very cute, mind you), but because she deserves better than a life where she has to resort to extremes to punish people who she feels have done her wrong. She deserves to have a few things done right to her.

And to the rest of you: Be kind to your fellow person. You never know who you’ll be molding into the next Mahatma Gandhi (or into the next Saddam Hussein, for that matter).

For the record, I’ve already ordered not just one replacement light, but also a whole box of them. Considering a container of six cost $7.92, I think I can afford the 75 percent interest.

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