Calvin's Decision

My favorite book in the forth grade (courtesy of Mr. Winningham at Carrol Elementary) was Wayside School is Falling Down. In Chapter fourteen Calvin is turning a year older. He explains to his friends what he values as a birthday present. His explanation is particularly interesting as it relates to time:

See, I usually get toys ... but they break, or get lost, or something happens to them. But this year I'm getting something I'll never lose. I'll have it for the rest of my life.

Calvin is a boy who looks at the way immediacy is overshadowed in the possession of a lifelasting gift. Unlike most children, this longing is stirring inside him, and it is a powerful force. In the story it brings him to an absurd possibility.

When Terrence asks him what he's going to get, he replies, "A tattoo."

Then come the suggestions from his classmates.

Steven tells him to get a snake. Deedee tells him to get an eagle, saying, "They're the best!". Kathy emphatically suggests Calvin get a tattoo of a dead rat. Jason tells him to get a naked lady.

Calvin responds to his peers with one of the most profound reflections I have ever heard in my life:

I just don't know ... I've never had to make such a tough decision. Nothing else I do matters very much. It's not like choosing jelly beans! If you pick the wrong color jelly bean, big deal, you can always spit it out. But once you get a tattoo, you can't change your mind. You can't erase tattoos. Whatever I get I'll have for the rest of my life!

Calvin describes in some sense a mood he feels in light of making a lasting choice. It is a choice he intends to be committed to. The effects of his choice will be with him while he is glad to have made the choice, and the effects will be with him when if he regrets it too.

Although getting a tattoo has nothing to do with devotion per se, Calvin's choice shows the anxiety of standing before the rest of our lives with a choice to make. The devotional life is similar in this way, and I often find myself in a similar state when I hear God's words as He speaks them to me: "You shall love ...".

Calvin's friends are in the light-hearted world where amusements are here today and thrown away the next day. But Calvin desires to approach life with a certain kind of seriousness. An approach that he can seriously live with.

In this light the fun, (and in Jason's case) erotic aspects of the choice are transfigured by its permanence.

It was easy for the others to make suggestions. They wouldn't have to live with it for the rest of their lives.

So Calvin returns to school the next day, and everyone is curious about what he got. He recalls a provoking conversation with his father:

It was a real tough decision ... I almost got a leopard fighting a snake. But then my dad told me to think about it. He said it was sort of like getting a second nose. You may think you want another nose, because that way if one nose gets stuffed up, you can breathe through the other nose. But then he asked me, 'Calvin, do you really want two noses?'

The father's counsel is wise (as the teacher is quick to point out), but in a peculiar kind of way. He makes a foolish suggestion and then argues in favor of it, and then says, 'But do you really want to make this foolish choice?'.

In a way, the father's advice is not to lean on our 'thoughts' about what to choose, but to instead look at making the choices we can live with ... to look at our priorities and notice instead the things we want, and not necessarily the things which have the most easily recognized value.

Calvin shows off his tattoo. It's a potato.

Everyone groans. They start telling Calvin all the things they would have gotten: a kangaroo, an eagle, a lightning bolt, etc. Bebe tells Calvin, "It's a pretty potato ... I wish I could draw potatoes that good." But the narrator tells us: "But even Bebe thought it was a dumb tattoo."

An important consideration for living a life of devotion is that when attains a personally impassioned understanding of what one wants, one will often find that few others are also interested in that thing.

And the ones who say they do are usually liars.

The end of the chapter is magnificent. I will quote it in entirity.

All day everyone told Calvin what they would have gotten: a fire-breathing dragon, a lightning bold, a creature from outer space.
None of them said they would have gotten a potato.
But Calvin knew better. He knew it was easy for his friends to say what they would have gotten, because they really hadn't had to choose. He was the only one who really knew what it was like to pick a tattoo. Even Mrs. Jewls didn't know that.
He looked at his potato. He smiled. It made him happy.
He was sure he had made the right choice.
At least he was pretty sure.