Find Yourself a Mischief Mentor
An imperfect guide for your imperfect self
Last summer I got lost in the woods, and not metaphorically.
On a run with my dog in an unfamiliar stretch of forest, my gut said I was going the wrong way. No trail blazes to be found, each clump of lichened rocks resembled the last, and the gray snag with its vertical line of woodpecker scars, I was sure I’d seen it two minutes ago.
I shortened my stride into a walk and then stopped. Breathing hard, I wiped sweat from my forehead and turned, first to look up the trail where it disappeared into the brambles, and then back the way we’d come. Three crows glided above the treetops, cawing, mocking my loss of direction. The dog looked up at the birds and then at me, panting and worried.
When I was young, not little anymore, but at the age when a child is aware they are becoming something more — a person who has choices, whose choices have consequences — I had an uneasy feeling that I was lost. “Do what I do, and be a good boy,” my role models said with their actions if not their words — we didn’t talk much about things that really mattered.
My industrious father, who’d always been a ‘good boy’ in spite of, or more likely because of, my grandfather’s alcoholism, walked the world as a ‘good man.’ He worked long hours and provided for our family, volunteered on the church council and as my basketball coach, and ran marathons. He was greeted by someone he knew everywhere we went.
My grandpa on my mother’s side had the strong hands of a retired repairman and volunteer firefighter and the hard-earned respect of his community. He sang bass in the choir, gave big hugs, loved my grandma, grilled a mean hamburger, and spoke few syllables.
My affable confirmation sponsor balanced a busy work life with being a dad to his boys and overcame serious health issues. Yet, he found time to hang out with me sharing his jokes, faith, and aura of goodness.
Grandpa Joe, who was not my grandfather, just a saintly neighbor with a wood shop, cut me pirate cutlasses and six-shooters out of scrap wood, working his cacophonous bandsaw then showing me how to sand the wood so I didn’t get splinters. He doled out butterscotch candies like communion wafers and was my first employer, hiring me to cut his grass when he could have managed. When I finished, he handed me a crisp fiver and stern advice to put it in the bank.
I tried to emulate them but fell short. They knew how to be good. I didn’t. They walked with a certainty that I awkwardly imitated, bumbling my way toward being a good boy, but feeling more lost with each passing step. Despite the light of their love and the sweet rain of their care, I felt stunted, misshapen.
In the dim confessional at Saint Anthony’s I came clean to the priest about my failings, my sins. And there were sins. Underneath the ‘good boy’ facade, my husky-sized J.C. Penny jeans, and a dusty pair of Stride-Rites, I was trouble.
I hid behind an evergreen shrub and threw snowballs at passing school busses; vandalized the neighborhood, knocking over little kids’ snowmen in the winter and smashing election signs around Halloween; played cards at the back of the classroom instead of doing my math worksheet and copied Jennifer’s answers when Mrs. Hayes asked for my paper; paged through a friend’s uncle’s stack of Penthouses we discovered in a stuffy attic; experimented with words — not just cusses, but the disgusting sexist, antisemitic, and racist bullshit you find today on Discord servers where boys go to play pretend; pushed around my little sister and my brothers.
Still, they said I was a good boy. Grandpa gave me a hug and tickled my ribs. The assistant principal questioned me about the snowballs and sent me back to class when I said I didn’t do it. Mrs. Hayes put a sticker on my math paper. Grandpa Joe nodded appraisingly at his lawn. The priest issued a paltry penance of ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers.
My head spun. This is what it meant to be good? Sweet on the outside, but an asshole where it counts? The shame of doing wrong, for hurting others, for failing to live up to the example of my role models mixed like oil with the holy water of a goodnight kiss on the forehead from my dad.
What I didn’t know then was that trouble is part of figuring out how to live. Without the freedom to fall on my face, there could be no real becoming, no forging of an internal compass. Have I figured some things out? Yes, I have. Do I wish I could go back and smack that kid for being a jerk? Uh-huh.
But figuring things out wasn’t a lightbulb moment, no blinding light on the road to Damascus. And I got lucky. Some guys, a different sort of men, showed up in my life when I needed them and helped me get a handle on my nonsense. They pointed me in the right direction, not with piety, but the opposite. They showed me how to mess around a little bit because messing around is the key to learning right from wrong.
They were mischief mentors who taught being good meant being real, not perfect.
One such mischief mentor was Mike Dobrovic, my high school swim coach. A recent Notre Dame grad and not much older than his swimmers, he was a big man with a big voice and a mahogany mustache who loomed large in my adolescence. Outwardly, Mike could have passed for one of my more saintly role models. He worked long hours at his accounting job and pushed us to work hard in the pool. He preached a motto of “Family, School, Pool.” And he was a good man.
But Mike also brought a different sort of energy, an energy the other men in my life suppressed. He did donuts in the snowy parking lot in his Pontiac Fiero as he skidded in for 6 am practice. He instigated kickboard fights, skipping them across the pool at our heads when we popped up for air. He belted “Roxanne!” along with the music blaring from the poolside speakers. He flirted with and later married our attractive diving coach, Diane, and danced in a mob with us at their wedding.
While messing around, Mike also taught me what it meant to be good. He squashed my locker banter about a girl whom I’d kissed, vehemently demanded the upperclassmen quit hazing us freshmen, and gave me the chance to lead by making space for captains to say our piece before each meet. He apologized when he lost his temper and loved us when we messed up. He cried on senior night.
In Mike, I had a mentor who was both mischievous and good, who was, most importantly, real. An imperfect guide who helped me feel a little less lost.
We need mischief in our lives; we need guides through the gray area between lofty expectations and rule-breaking. We need people who will help us discover codes to live by, codes we unearth not by walking the saint’s path, but by wandering from it.
Now I’m a middle school teacher, a coach, an uncle, and a dad. I’ve got outstanding mischief mentor opportunities. But I wonder if I’m doing enough to help the ones coming up behind me ease off the burden of goodness, to know they’re okay precisely because of the trouble they’ve found. I think it’s time to quit being so good and to find a little more mischief.
Lost in the woods. “Now what?” I thought. Keep going and risk overheating and too many miles? Retreat and try to get my bearings?
Eventually, the dog and I turned and went back the way we came, hiking instead of running. Worst case, we’d retrace our steps back to the car. It was the right call, but I was mad at myself for losing my way.
Not three minutes later a hiker came around a bend in the trail toward us. Wearing a floppy hat and muddy boots and bent slightly over his hiking poles, he happily produced a map and pointed me in the right direction when I asked him for help.
Turns out I was headed the right way the whole time. I just didn’t know it.
Post Script: I wrote about another mischief mentor, the indefatigable Don Green, in a previous post…
