19. Doing Favours Can Be Dangerous

I found out one time that doing a favour for someone could get you into a lot of trouble. I was in the eighth grade at the time, and we were having a final test. During the test, the girl sitting next to me whispered something, but I didn't understand. So I leaned over her way and found out that she was trying to ask me if I had an extra pen. She showed me that hers was out of ink and would not write. I happened to have an extra one, so I took it out of my pocket and put it on her desk.

Later, after the test papers had been turned in, the teacher asked me to stay in the room when all the other students were dismissed. As soon as we were alone she began to talk to me about what it meant to grow up; she mentioned how important it was to stand on your own two feet and be responsible for your own acts. For a long time, she talked about honesty and emphasized the fact that when people do something dishonest, they are really cheating themselves. She made me promise that I would think seriously about all the things she had said, and then she told me I could leave. I walked out of the room wondering why she had chosen to talk to me about all those things.

Later on, I found out that she thought I had cheated on the test. When she saw me lean over to talk to the girl next to me, it looked as though I was copying answers from the girl's test paper. I tried to explain about the pen, but all she could say was it seemed awfully strange to her that I hadn't mentioned anything about the pen the day she talked to me right after the test. Even though I tried to explain that I was just doing the girl a favour by letting her use my pen, I am sure she continued to believe that I had cheated on the test.