Black Death

Responsibility (n) - that from which Amy flees like the plague.


I suppose that, sometimes, the need to be responsible just attacks you.

Example a: One morning, a giant bearded wizard informs you that you are in possession of the ring that will decide the fate of the earth. You can't give the ring away, you can't just chuck it in a river, and you can't even melt it down into nothing in your ordinary fire. You have no choice unless you want the whole world to go to hell in a hand basket.






You have to saddle up, take responsibility for your god-awful luck, and head out to Mount Doom to destroy that evil power forever. If you fail, you might as well be dead...and the rest of the good world along with you.

Sometimes, people take up responsibility on their own.

Example b: McDreamy decided one day to become a kickass doctor and save lives. Now he is responsible (by his own choice) for his patients and those annoying interns studying under him.




Then, there are people like me who run away from responsibility like a loon.

For the fall semester at Pitt, I had enrolled in a teaching class that required observational field experience. In order to do that, the state mandates that students in this class get a number of clearances so they don’t infect the children with TB or molest them on their lunch break. Fair enough.

But could I do it? Could I call to make a doctor’s appointment to get a TB shot? Could I go down to the UPS store to get fingerprinted and prove that I’m not a raving, homicidal, child-molesting crazy person? No. No, I couldn’t it. Because doing so wouldn’t have shown that I was responsible, that I could get stuff done without being poked and prodded incessantly by a higher power, that I could do things on my own.

But, instead of gritting my teeth and being responsible, I dropped the class after a month of debating with myself.

I don’t know what my calling is. I certainly haven’t figured out what I’m good at or what I want to do with the rest of my life, but teaching clearly isn’t for me. Saving the world from doom and destruction by dropping a ring of power into a volcano-esque mountain thing probably isn't for me, either. But you never know.