Carpooling home through my neighborhood, a few years ago, I noticed our car parked in front of a stranger’s house. This was before either child was old enough to drive, so I had to wonder: What was my husband doing there? Was he hand-delivering a mis-addressed package? Selling Girl Scout cookies? Collecting for charity? Clearly, he had some explaining to do.
But when I got home, I found both car and husband parked right where they should be – in the driveway and in front of the TV, respectively. I was confused.
“How can you be in two places at once?” I wanted to know.
“A magician never reveals his secrets – but why do you ask? Where else should I be?”
“It’s not you, so much as the car. I could have sworn I just saw it, a few blocks away. I was so sure!”
“What made you think it was our car, anyway?”
“Because of the paint,” I said. “It was the same year, and shape, and color as ours, and it had the same paint peeling – you know, the paint that looks like chrome, peeling off that back passenger window? That’s what I noticed.”
“Well, did it occur to you that maybe they used that same paint on more than one car?”
“Oh! It was the paint! It was the paint, all along!”
“That’s what I said.”
“But that means – it isn’t my fault!”
As I spoke those words, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. Until that minute, without realizing it, I had actually believed that that peeling paint was somehow my fault. Never mind that it didn’t make any sense, or that I don’t possess the kind of powers that can peel paint off a car. Now, I could see it was the paint that was at fault, not me. I was off the hook!
I do this with a lot of things. In fact, sometimes I think that “fault” is just a sort of giant Post-it note that’s been pasted on you. And as soon as you notice it, you try to peel it off … often so you can stick it onto somebody else.
Take the time my mother called. She was happy and excited, because she had some good news. “Honey? I just read an article about bunions, and you can relax because those bunions you have are not your fault!”
“They’re not? But you always told me I’d get them from wearing high heels.”
“I know, but it turns out that shoes don’t cause them, after all. Turns out, they’re hereditary!”
“Oh.” My mind spun wildly. Then it stabilized. “So, I guess that makes them YOUR fault.”
Silence. “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that,” said my mother.
But I guess I had…and now, having shed that Post-it note, I wasn’t taking it back. In fact, maybe NONE of the things I’ve felt guilty about, over the years, are really my fault, at all.
For example, back to the car. It eventually chugged its last, and we needed a new one. “But this time we’re going to register the car to me, in just my name,” I said to my husband. “I’m tired of having my registration renewal threatened because you haven’t paid your parking tickets. They are not my fault.”
“You’re the one who wanted both our names on the registration,” he said.
“Well, I’m done with that,” I replied. “One of us is the good driver, and that’s who should own the car.”
So that’s what we did – and drove the new car home from the dealership in time to open the weekend’s mail. “What’s this from the DMV?” I asked. “They couldn’t possibly have processed the paperwork THAT fast.”
“Well, wouldja look at that,” my husband said. His voice sounded odd.
“I can see it — it’s a ticket,” I answered. “Hmmm. For going through a red-light without stopping. That’s exactly the kind of thing I warned you about! What’s so funny?”
“Because look who it was!” my beloved spluttered. “Somebody made an illegal turn, on a red light, right into the Lord & Taylor lot. Who do you think that was, at 10:01 on a Saturday morning?”
I snatched the letter from him. “Give me that before you choke on your own smugness,” I said. I paid the ticket, and then tore up the receipt into little pieces.
Still, it’ll be a long time before I can get rid of that particular “guilty” sign on my back!
