It was only 20 minutes before the store closed but still I paused only for a second to briefly reconsider going inside, but I needed the items on my shopping list far too bad to give it up. Inside, the store was still bustling, the shoppers seemingly unaware of the tellers who constantly checked their watches.
“Store closes in 15 minutes,” the unseen voice reminded me as I rushed to the only remaining open check-out lane.
“I’m so sorry I’m holding things up,” I started to apologize but then stopped short as I noticed the people still coming in the store. The teller said nothing, only handed me my change and glanced at her watch.
I doubt she’d agree rules are made to be broken.
I quietly opened the door to the intensive care unit on the second floor of the hospital. I doubted there was any change in Mr. Kelly and it was long past visiting hours but I tiptoed past the nurses’ station anyway. A nurse looked up from her computer screen and I froze like an animal caught in the lights of a passing car. She looked down again without saying a word.
She knows rules are made to be broken.
“Rules are there for a reason,” my mother told my brothers, my sister and me when we were younger.
We just laughed and danced around the living room. “Rules are made to be broken!” we squealed and spun around her before collapsing in a fit of laughter at her feet. I just knew that this would always be us: dancing around the rules.
But my sister became a school principle; my brother became a cop. Only I remain.
“Journalists break every rule, even the ones they set for themselves,” said Nick Clooney. I met the media personality and famous father at a campus event by chance and begged some career advice out of him. “I’d say you’ll get fired at least once,” he told me. “That is, if you’re any good at what you do. Because if you’re a good journalist, you’ll get fired at least once for a rule you broke for something you believed in… or worse, for a rule you refused to break.”
I had smiled then, not really knowing what he meant or appreciating how right he was, and not knowing how right I’d turn out to be when he asked me why I wanted to be a journalist.
“Because I’m good at breaking the rules,” I’d said that night too cocky for my own good. “And I’m better at following them.”
“I like your game,” Mr. Clooney said and laughed. “I’d say you’re probably up for the challenge. You might even turn out to be good at this.”
And me must be right. He’s broken all the rules.
