One day my son came home from school frustrated that a teacher had given him a "respect task" for an unfortunate incident involving a crisp packet. Someone had, allegedly, knocked the packet out of his hands, emptying the contents all over the teacher's clothes. It wasn't his fault, it was all very unfair, etc. etc. Oh dear.
As I felt a modicum of sympathy, I offered to write the first draft of his 500 word respect task while he got on with some real homework.
In retrospect, maybe I didn't take it quite as seriously as I should have done:
5 March 2019
As lunchtime came to an end, I felt a mounting sense of excitement deep within me. Later in the afternoon, my sister [A.] would be picking up her first ever car. She was planning to drive us both around the unsuspecting streets of Chislehurst – a milestone in her young life and one that I couldn’t wait to share with her. There would even be the promise of future lifts to school if I played my cards right.
Lost for a fleeting moment in this inspiring vision of the future, I absent-mindedly offered my friend [M.] a crisp from my lunch packet. Too late did I notice another classmate’s hand grabbing for the spoils – an uninvited and rather rude intervention according to the gentleman’s etiquette of the luncheon hour. An unfortunate accident was the result, the intended generosity on my part turned so swiftly on its head - into recrimination and regret.
“How could I have acted differently?” I later mused to myself, as [A.] finally changed up from first to second gear.
The outline of three alternative solutions began to form, as if by magic, in my addled teenage mind:
1. As responsible members of humankind, we need to conserve our food for those less fortunate than ourselves. Though I had restrained myself from taking a single bite out of the errant crisp packet, I had not thought beyond the confines of my own circle of school friends. Instead of inviting [M.] to be the first to taste the bounty within the packet mysteriously labelled “Walkers”, I should have persuaded [A.] to drive immediately to the nearest food bank for the poor. For my friend [M.] is just as well fed as I am and had no pressing need for the offered crisp.
2. The cliff-edge of Brexit is fast approaching - only 24 days to go as I write this. With our esteemed leader, Theresa May, appearing determined to risk a “no-deal” scenario, I should have realised that I needed to stockpile whatever spare food that I had my possession. The best course of action would therefore have been to hide the offending crisp packet, a particularly rare specimen of the variety “Ready Salted”, in my belongings until the first week of April, at which point I could have sold the errant single crisp to [M.] for £1 – and most likely an entire packet for £20.
3. Most of all, my CCF [Combined Cadet Force] training shows me that I had failed to carry out a full risk assessment of the situation. Had I done so, maybe the impending disaster could have somehow been foreseen – and thus prevented. Before I offered [M.] the hand of friendship, generosity and outstretched crisp bag, I should have envisaged the three worst case scenarios that could occur. Nuclear war appeared too remote at that very moment, but a terrorist attack was a possibility one is constantly reminded could strike at any time. However, I now see that the unexpected, thrusting arm movement of a classmate was at that moment the most likely of the three scenarios.
Next time I shall consider all the above factors and hope that this will enable me to make a better decision.