How many of us really know what is best for us? Certainly not the “runaway” youth from the safety of the Hocking Hills of the former Boys’ Industrial School pictured above. You will note that neither of his two feet are on the ground – he was airborne to be sure! Perhaps his cottage parents were a bit stricter than he thought they should have been. Perhaps the English class dealing with gerunds, split infinitives and dangling participles finally got to him. Or perhaps the barber school’s teacher, Mr. Tharp, got to him when he went in for his regular haircut and that tiny piece of straw was stuck through the floppy part of his ear, you know where you’re not supposed to have an “earring”. Taking hold of that piece of straw, Mr. Tharp had said, “I could take this out right now or you could later; but if its there when you come in again I will take it out.” You see, boys at the B.I.S. were not allowed to wear any earrings or other adornment on their body so they would substitute a short piece of straw. Regulations and sameness in an institution are part of the discipline.

Talk about a logjam of the mind. Runaway to what? Since my wife and I were brought to the reality that, whether we knew it or not, we were going to write another book – the pendulum of duty and opportunity knocks few times sometimes – we have been made aware of little incidents like the above story of a piece of straw being “just one little thing” boys on the hill used to see how far they could “push the envelope” before they earned enough demerits to prolong their stay in the reform school. We see this all around us whether it’s at home, at school, at the job or in the neighborhood. It never stops.

When I was in high school there were two or three boys who thought a “Don Eagle” haircut would be neat. (To the unaware, Don Eagle was a wrestler of that era whose hair cut looked a bit like an Indian coiffure – a big streak of hair about three inches wide from the brow, trimmed backwards to a point about level with the ears.) Well, those boys did get to school that day but not for long. Discipline was a reality in the late 1940’s and it did not take long for The Principal to coral those boys into the office and eject them from the school building before all the other boys (maybe 600 or more!!) got nerve enough to visit their barber! Strange how time unravels things; a few decades later, one of those boys became an employee at the Boys’ Industrial School. I’m sure he got a hair cut with a little less flair by that time.

Logjam of the mind? Just as the runaway boy thought he knew best and he was “goin’ home”, many people think their solutions to the problems of the world, as they see them, are the best. On another occasion, one of the boys on the hill confided with one of the employees, “When I get home I’m going to be just like my Dad”. The good thoughts turned sour when the employee learned this boy’s Dad was in the Ohio State Penitentiary. No serious counsel could change that boy’s log jammed mind.

In years gone by how many times did youngsters freely open their mouths to the “spoonful of poison” their mother was ready to dump into their mouths to un-constipate their body? How much fun is it to “do exercises” to improve a physical malady? How much fun is it to push away that extra piece of pie to stay on a needed weight losing diet? What about avoiding that crave for a cigarette, or maybe even a swig of a mind-strangling brew?

It really doesn’t matter whether our war with discipline is a tiny piece of straw instead of a real earring or a mind-destroying drink of an alcoholic beverage. Or perhaps those between meal snacks that we know add to the girth of our stomach. You don’t have to be confined with several hundred other young men to find a logjam exists in our minds. Whatever your problem, there is an answer if only you will honestly consider it. To the earnest seeker, the Bible contains the most reliable reference books for preparing our hearts to be good parents, obedient children or the most successful person in town. Logjam in your life? Let God have a chance to present a different solution for you.

THE WORDWRIGHT - Copyrighted 2007 - Bill Venrick