This first rule may sound a little harsh, especially in its application to teenagers. In the long-honored tradition of legal scholars, this is a perfect example of how hard cases make difficult rules.
The rule has its genesis in the early days of my legal career. I received a call very late one night from my neighbor across the street. He was at the county jail and wanted me to bail him out. I knew that he had three children at home and that his wife was out of town. Since the last thing I wanted was rampaging children across the street, I quickly dressed and headed for the county jail. It turned out that he had been picked up for driving under the influence. By the time I arrived, he did not appear to be intoxicated but I knew that he was having troubles with his business and it did not surprise me that he might have been drinking. I used my bar association membership card to get him released without posting bail.
Over the next few months, I helped him through the court system. As with most people accused of a crime, he maintained that he was innocent and that he had only had a few drinks. By this time, the court system was not yet as strict on drunk drivers as it rightfully is today but the system still required that he do some community service, pay a fine and court costs, and attend a few AA meetings. I thought all of this would be good for him and would significantly decrease the chance that he might drink and drive again. He was, unfortunately, not very impressed.
Six months later I received a call from his wife very early one morning. My friend and neighbor had died the night before in a terrible crash in which the other driver was drunk. As we would later find out, my friend was also drunk at the time. Based on what we learned of his business affairs later, it was entirely possible that he may have committed suicide in that crash and depended on the drink to give him the nerve to do it.
The death of my friend was devastating on his family. One of the three kids had trouble coping with school and other issues. His widow found her way into serious financial trouble between a life insurance premium that did not get paid and some ill-conceived spending following the tragedy. She married a man on the rebound who turned out to be abusive at best. The family eventually righted itself and they are all well and happy but for a decade or so after the wreck, they suffered needlessly.
As I worked to help them pick up the pieces of their life and cope with tragedy of unfathomable proportions, one thought occurred to me over and over again. Would my friend still be alive if I had helped him see the error of his way when he was first arrested for driving while intoxicated?
My fears were confirmed when I received a call a few months later from another neighbor and friend who had been put in jail for the same offense. I decided that I would try my best to keep this one alive by forcing him to stay overnight in jail until I bailed him out. When I arrived at the jail the next morning, I had to wait with the others who were picking up friends or loved ones at the jail, likely for similar offenses. This was the toughest group of people I had ever seen. If I had encountered this group anywhere other than the police station, I would have run away as fast as I could and promised whoever I saw that I would never return. When they finally released my friend, he was very thankful and was especially grateful for my rescuing him before he actually had to eat any of the jail food. I suspect that if he had seen the group waiting for the other inmates, he would have been more grateful than he originally realized.
I helped this friend negotiate his way through the justice system as well. By this time, the courts had become a bit more serious about drunk drivers. As a result, his fines were more expensive and he served more public service time. At the end of the process, he paid his bill, thanked me for the help, and said that he would never do anything that would put him at risk of going through that again. I believed him at the time and, as it turned out, he was right. He never spent another night in jail and is alive today.
I decided at that point that I would apply this seemingly harsh rule to my children who were obviously much more important to me than my neighbors. At the ripe old age of five, if you had asked either of my children what happens if you get thrown in jail, they would have said, “You spend the night in jail and in the morning Daddy will come and pick you up.” To this point neither of them has committed an offense sufficient to put the rule to the test and they are both now in college. That is a good thing on two levels. It is obviously a virtue to have stayed out of jail through your teenage years. It is even better, however, to survive your teenage years. For that I am happy and more convinced today than I was 25 years ago when this story started that rule number one must be nobody gets out of jail until they have spent one night behind bars.
Another friend and neighbor from a different chapter in my life had the right idea about instilling responsibility in her children. Her oldest child was arrested for a relatively minor offense. She called me to ask some questions and seemed to be leaning toward the utterly stupid response of many parents when their child is disciplined. She seemed to be asking about ways she could get her son out of trouble so that his records or his insurance or whatever would not be negatively impacted. I asked her to describe her encounter with the police. The police started to tell her what was going to happen to her child. She stopped the officer in mid-sentence and said, “You do whatever you need to do with him. There is not anything you can do that would be worse than what I am going to do when he gets home.” That is the right attitude. If you are faced with a loved one who has engaged in some sort of transgression, whether it is minor or major, there is no greater gift you can give that person than to force them to be accountable for their actions. You will be glad you did it every day of their life while they are behaving properly and acting like solid members of our society. Imagine what a better world this would be if every troubled youngster had received that same gift.
As with the rest of the Nine Rules, this one has numerous parallels. The concept that people are and should be responsible for their own actions seems fundamental enough. It is clear, nonetheless, in our modern society that the public is generally unwilling to accept that tenet. A football super star is acquitted of murder when his blood was all over the scene. Some of us are actually surprised when he later writes a book contemplating how he would have committed the murders, if he had done it. A sitting President is allowed to continue serving after lying and degrading the office with nearly unbelievable sexual encounters. Notwithstanding those facts, his wife stays with him, even if only for the sake of political expedience. These are the acts of a society that is unwilling or unable to hold people responsible for their acts. I gave my children the clear message that they would be responsible for their own acts and I gave them that message at a very young age. They certainly are not perfect but they understand responsibility. I submit that the world would be a much better place if everyone was willing and able to accept responsibility for their actions. A few nights in jail might go a long way to making that dream come true.
If you want to grow to an old age or if you want your family to grow to an old age, you must take responsibility for your actions and see to it that your family is held accountable as well.
Fortunately for most people, the night in jail rule is never actually put to the test. Very few of us get that call at midnight from one of our children who is, through no fault of their own, temporarily residing in the custody of the state. Very few of us have to agonize over the tough love we are giving to our child for what must be a very long night. So how can we apply this rule in the real world? Some examples should clarify the point.
My son was a reasonably well-behaved student in elementary school. He was not exactly genius level but he made acceptable grades for the most part and seemed to get along reasonably well with his teachers. We had never really received any harsh messages from teachers or administrators. That all changed literally in his last week of fifth grade when I received a call from the principal. My first reaction was to assume that she was going through her list of fifth graders and calling the parents of the ones who had not yet gotten in trouble just so that we could have the experience of a call from the principal. I was wrong.
My son had written the principal a letter. In it he described a variety of grievances resulting from mistreatment by his teacher. At about the same time, he had neglected to hand in an important assignment that was going to have a profound impact on his final grades. I was proud of the fact that he had composed a well-written letter that commanded the principal’s attention but I was concerned about his failure to hand in an assignment on which I knew he had worked.
Some parents would have immediately seen a connection between the letter and the supposedly lost homework and would have immediately turned on the teacher in an effort to defend their offspring. The problem with such an approach is that it teaches the child that blame for their current problems can be readily shifted from them to others without any real regard for where the problem actually lies. The night in jail approach, however, teaches the child that he is responsible for his lot in life even if others may have had an impact on his current position.
I have no idea how the homework got lost (neither did son, by the way) but I did not especially care. I let him know right away that it was his responsibility to turn in his homework and that I was disappointed he had failed in this regard. This should not come as much of a surprise but this was neither the first nor the last conversation we had that was consumed, for the most part, by this same theme. I also let him know that it was not a good idea to consume my time dealing with his school problems because my billing rate at the time was a seemingly reasonable $200 per hour. He offered to pay for my time which I thought was a nice gesture, even if somewhat hollow given his annual income as a fifth grader.
I agreed to go with him to visit with his teacher. We did not mention either the letter or the substance or fact of any of his complaints. I told the teacher that I knew he had worked on the assignment because I had witnessed it with my own eyes. I also said that he accepted responsibility for not turning the assignment in. I told her that I was going to make him do the assignment in any event because I wanted him to learn the material and I also wanted him to understand that he cannot avoid work by ignoring it. By this point, he was willing to accept any conditions to get out of his mess. She agreed to give him one-half the normal credit if he handed it in the next day. He thanked her for her understanding and did a nice job on the assignment that evening. He did well enough to earn an A which the teacher reduced to a C as we agreed.
At the time I am sure he thought this was all about getting a good grade. Of course, that was not the point at all. The point was that he had to accept responsibility for his actions and, while this lesson probably did not make that happen, consistent delivery of that message to children drives home the point. Imagine how different our current legal system would be if OJ Simpson and the members of his jury had understood this basic concept and applied it to regular people and celebrities alike.
Learning to accept responsibility is an absolutely critical life skill. Giving those who you love a complete understanding of the principle of accountability is even more important.
Rule One: If you get thrown in jail, you are going to spend the night so don’t even bother to call me until the next morning.
Rule For Life Number One
If you get thrown in jail, you are going to spend the night.
