Vandalized

How to reframe a slurpee assault and other summer lessons

Photo by Arifin Salleh on Unsplash

The irony is not lost on me that when the incident happened I was teaching a class on ethics. Ethical leadership to be specific. Mid-paragraph in the chat, espousing the benefits of proactive vs. reactive ethical frameworks, I heard a loud noise just outside my living room window, like something had bounced off the glass. I was sitting on the couch right next to that window, by the way, so the words I heard next felt rather personal—directed right at me. The voice of a boy saying, “Shit! I missed!”

I put aside my laptop, jumped up, and ran to the front door. But by the time I yanked it open whoever it was had already run off, leaving me there alone with the evidence. I couldn’t see anything in the evening dark, but the sickly sweet smell of sugary drink confirmed what had happened. I looked more closely at the window, and sure enough, it was covered in what turned out to be the remnants of a red Seven-Eleven slurpee. I called upstairs to my family who came outside to investigate. “What the?” demanded my 8-year-old. My husband picked up the now empty cup from the lawn, analyzing the sticky drink’s trajectory. What were they aiming for?

ME!!

WHY ME??

The caps are for emphasis, but in the moment I didn’t actually yell. I don’t know if the ethical write up I had been crafting somehow took over my brain, but for some reason—in the slurpee aftermath—I was calm. (My husband found it a bit eerie). I went back inside, found a bowl, some warm water, and then started wiping down the window, the door, the floor of the porch. The red splatter radius was wide! I knew we wouldn’t find the culprits. I also knew there would be no satisfactory answer to the “why me?” So, instead I cleaned red food dye and pondered how to work this story into another student response.

In a summer filled with a trailmix of both joy and pain, I am feeling a little wary about reaching into the metaphorical bag because I don’t know what mix of nuts I’m going to end up with in my hand. And that’s so life! I am grateful (if a little fatigued) to be teaching this ethics course in the middle of the summer because it’s obligating lots of thought in the midst of many big feelings. Philosophical readings offer a sort of baseline for my navigation of it all. In the Nichomachean Ethics,

Aristotle repeatedly states that virtue is a mean. The mean is a state of clarification and apprehension in the midst of pleasures and pains that allows one to judge what seems most truly pleasant or painful. This active state of the soul is the condition in which all the powers of the soul are at work in concert. Achieving good character is a process of clearing away the obstacles that stand in the way of the full efficacy of the soul.

I feel like there have been a good number of obstacles this summer and so this course is as much a primer for my own way forward as it might be for the students. One researcher for the Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership says that ethics can be taught, and as a lifelong learner (so help me God!) that gives me some hope. “An ethical intervention can have a lasting effect consistent with the idea of habit-formation.” What those interventions look like in the day-to-day has me ever curious. I’d love to learn from you as well! Feel free to leave a comment or suggestion about your ethical habit formation. In the meantime I’ll be over here inspecting my window frame for the dregs of red syrup, channeling my inner Aristotle, thinking about the golden mean.