Confessions of a Rule Follower

This may surprise you, but I’m a rule-follower at heart. Always have been. I respect rules and appreciate their importance in any society that strives for something better than complete chaos. I’m comforted by rules. They make me feel safe. I do choose, sometimes, to break the rules, but I always do so fully prepared to accept any consequence that may result.

In 1961, The Milgram Experiment studied people’s reaction to authority by ordering participants to administer an electrical shock to a subject failing to answer questions correctly. A surprising 65% of participants progressed through increasing voltage and what appeared to be increasing pain for the fake subjects (who were not, in reality, receiving electrical shocks at all) when they were instructed to do so by an authority figure. I would like to think I would have been part of the 35% who refused to deliver the final, massive shock. But, if compliance with authority is (as I’m certain it must be) a continuum, then I would fall solidly in the “rule-follower” section of that continuum. And while I strongly believe that my being a rule-follower has its advantages, it most assuredly has its pitfalls as well.

Years ago, while vacationing in Savannah, Georgia, my sister and I spent an afternoon at a swanky spa while our husbands golfed. The spa’s website touted a Scotch Spray among their signature services and this was included in nearly every spa package available. The fact that the website offered no description of this service should have been my first clue, but being the rule-follower that I am, I plodded haplessly along making my appointment. An appointment that included a Scotch Spray.

After a massage and a relaxing soak in an aroma-therapy hot tub of some sort, a spa employee came to collect me for my Scotch Spray. Dressed in only my fluffy spa robe, I followed the employee into a tiled room with several shower heads running the length of floor-to-ceiling pipes. The employee ordered me to disrobe and stand in an area surrounded by these pipes. An awkward moment passed while I waited for her to leave but then, realizing she didn't intend to leave, I obediently disrobed and stood among the shower-head-studded pipes. She turned a knob and I was pelted from all sides with warm water. I was thinking, “This isn’t so bad,” when the spa employee shouted an instruction that I was sure I’d misheard. I looked back over my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry… what?”  “Grab hold of the two pipes directly in front you,” she repeated. I looked back one more time, wearing my trepidation on my face like a mask, to find her standing there, holding what appeared to be a fire hose, nodding somberly. Knowing I was doomed to comply by a quirk of my personality, I hung my head dejectedly, turned around a grabbed the pipes.

What followed was not unpleasant, and I may have even enjoyed it if only I could have kept at bay the images that crept into my mind of 1970s women’s prison films. My one small victory against authority in this story came when the spa employee shouted for me to turn around and face her. While I’d like to tell you I said something flippant, sassy and defiant, the truth is I only managed an oddly apologetic, “No, thank you.” Yep, I really fought the power. Pretty proud of that.

Rule-following and compliance with authority has a place in my life and I wouldn’t want to change that… much. But maybe moving just a bit closer to “dissident” on the continuum of compliance with authority would serve me well. Perhaps being quicker to break the rules and more confident standing up to authority, especially when those rules and that authority threaten my happiness and that of my children, is something for which to strive.

So I've decided to stand up for myself, and for Ben and Lucy, in an effort to preserve our happiness and fight for a better life for all of us.  I'm going to break some rules if that's what's needed. Question authority. Move a step away from “rule-follower” and a step closer to “dissident."  Who knows, maybe I’ll even stick it to the man.

Or at least say “no” next time to a signature spa service disturbingly akin to an enhanced interrogation technique. That’ll show ‘em.