Cheating
aka Sowing Regret

I got away with a few things that, in retrospect, I am not proud of.

At all.

Cheating (1): I had a hard time learning how to swim. I went to swimming school two summers running and never did get the hang of it. Not for lack of trying or attendance, mind you. I even got the “best attendance” award one summer (which Mom laid claim to for “kicking me out of the house” every morning).

Come the third summer, I slugged away at it again for several swimmable (as in July-August in northern Sweden) weeks, but toward the end of that swim season, still no joy. True, I was getting closer, no doubt, and was able to “swim” (as in somehow staying afloat) for a meter or two or three without drowning. Still, I could not swim.

But three summers without getting the hang of it was embarrassing. Very. So rather than owning up, I told my Mom, and the swimming instructor that I could now swim. Thanks, guys.

Well, the wheels of a lie like that hit the road by doing actual swimming. And this actual swimming, according to the instructor, who I think believed me when I said I now could, was to give the Iron Medal a go. At least the initial 50-meter part.

Sidebar: At that time, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sweden had a whole string of swimming medals, all the way up to what was called the Gold Magister Medal. The Iron Medal (Järnmärket in Swedish) was the entry point and you earned this medal by (a) swimming 50 meters in any style, in deep water, mind you; (b) 25 meters backstroke, also in deep water; (c) one minute (or ten meters) of straight floating; and (d) a dive from the edge of a water—as from the edge of a pool.

Back to the story:

I “met” the (a) requirement of this medal by convincing the swim teacher that I should be able to swim 50 meters in shallow water—you know, just in case. Wouldn’t want to drown in case I failed, would I? She, bless her easily-duped heart, agreed, and so I swam my Iron Medal requirement in shallow water, touching the bottom with my feet off and on throughout those painful 50 meters, something she did not notice (or ignored) so in the end she approved that part of the test. Iron Medalist me.

The point here, of course, is that I knew damn well that my feet had touched bottom, that I, in other words, had cheated. I should have been disqualified on the spot. But if she hadn’t noticed, or let on, I sure was not going to insist. Straight face me.

Now here is the weird thing: over the following two weeks I actually got the hang of it; I could do (and did, I believe) the 50 meters in deep water, but never re-took that test—since I had already passed it. Instead, I did the 25-meter backstroke and the floating and diving, all in deep water, and so, in the end, I “earned” my Iron Medal, which I (via Mom) proudly paid for, received, and wore.

I was congratulated by one and all—and never told a soul that I had, in fact, cheated.

Cheating (2): To earn top honors as a Swedish Boy Scout you had to do a 15-kilometer hike with just a map and compass. You made this hike in pairs, and our mission (Lasse’s and mine) was to find a particular spot out in the middle of foresty nowhere, bring something from it, and then orient ourselves either to the next spot or back home, and so complete the hike.

All the older boys had done this and proudly wore their First-Class badges on their Scout shirts to prove it. Now it was my and Lasse’s turn.

We were to set out around four a fall Saturday afternoon, and had to reach home (our Scout cottage) within 24 hours.

Now, here’s the rub. One of the Boy Scout leaders took us aside and made the emphatic point that we could not under any circumstances hitchhike any part of the assignment.

Sure, of course, we got that. Of course not.

Okay, so we packed needed equipment, including a small tent for our overnighting, met at four o’clock at Lasse’s place in town, and opened the first of two envelopes they had given us—numbered, you guessed it, “One” and “Two”.

The first envelope instruction, “Proceed to Enånger, then open the second envelope.”

Ha! How easy was this? Enånger was a small community exactly 15 kilometers south of Hudiksvall (my hometown). And of course, since we were told, emphatically, not to hitchhike, this was our hike. Amazingly easy. We could not believe our luck. Just follow the highway for 15 kilometers and we’d be done.

So, we took off, me, Lasse, and Grip (my German shepherd who came along for the walk). A few hours later (early evening) we arrived in Enånger and opened the second envelope, which had no right to say anything but “Congratulations” since we had now accomplished our 15K hike.

But not so fast.

The second envelope hoped that we had enjoyed our bus journey from Hudiksvall to Enånger (hence the injunction that we could not hitchhike, we were to take a bus—but the second part of this direction was mysteriously left out; I still wonder if those leaders left it out on purpose), then proceeded to give directions for our actual 15K hike through the forest and back to our Scout cottage.

We could not bloody believe it, but even so, off we went.

About halfway to the first (and only, as it happened) checkpoint, night had fallen and it was too dark really to continue. We looked at each other and realized that we were not going to locate anything in the darker and darker by the minute night so we decided, hell, let’s catch some sleep right here, and then let’s see how we make out in the morning.

I’m not sure exactly how, but we overslept by a mile.

A comfortable tent, with a comfortable dog to keep you warm as well, we both slept soundly and way into the morning. True, we had walked a lot, which probably helped.

Bottom line: we were not going to make it to the checkpoint now and still make it back by the deadline. What to do? What to do?

Oh, hell. We decided to head straight back to home base and lie.

After all, we had been fooled into walking 15K before starting the 15K hike, they had “lied” to us, so it was well within our rights to “lie right back” to them.

This is what we did.

The instructions included collecting something or other (stones, flowers, sticks, I don’t remember what) at the checkpoint to bring back as proof that we had made it. So, we grabbed some of each from where we were and then set out for home.

We made it back in time (barely, as it happened) and handed over the spoils.

We were both exhausted. The day had turned both sunny and hot on the way back, and there was no trail to follow. The only one who navigated the understory well was Grip that happy dog—who ran about 3Ks for every K we walked, we’d see him vanish up ahead only for him to then catch up with us from behind some minutes later.

Wiped out, I remember falling asleep in my parents’ car on the way home.

I am sure that Lasse (whose older brother Olle was also a Boy Scout, one of the junior leaders, in fact, but not the one who instructed us) complained loudly and officially about our shitty directions which had us do a 30K hike instead of 15K. Well, of course we didn’t do the second 15, perhaps 10. Still. And I’m also sure that Olle would have brought this up with the leaders in charge of planning the hike.

What I don’t know is whether Lasse told Olle the truth (I suspect that he did) and if Olle, in that case, passed that on. I suspect that the powers that be somehow learned the truth but that, since they had given us what in effect were faulty directions, decided to approve the hike as done, even though we didn’t make it to the checkpoint, and we were both awarded Boy Scouts 1st Class.

I don’t know how they dealt with us obviously lying about having made it to the checkpoint. Perhaps they believed us. Perhaps Lasse never told, perhaps Olle never brought it up; but I find that hard to believe.

Still, though, to this day, I now and then think of the 1st Class Hike which we cheated and faked—regardless of stupid and useless instructions. We never made it to the checkpoint while we said we did.

Cheating (3): I never cheated on tests in school (as a rule I nailed them all), except for one essay/story assignment where I simply re-told something I had read in a magazine hoping the teacher had not also read it. I got an A for the story. However, about a year later the same teacher pulled me aside in the hallway and said, under his breath, “I know that you lifted that story.” That’s all he had to say. I knew exactly what he was talking about. He said nothing more about it.

For all my lying and stealing as a kid, I am surprised that as far as cheating goes, that’s about it. Well, I have cheated now and then on my vegan diet, and then mostly with Cheetos, hence the name.

Cheating Moral: To me, the fact that the two times I definitely did cheat have stayed with me so clearly speaks volumes. You know what you’ve done is egregiously wrong and it eats at you long, long after the act itself.

Lifting the story for some reason never bothered me—I guess it’s in a writer’s nature to borrow where borrowing is possible (as in undetectable).

Strangely, though, I never felt that bad about my pilfering small (and sometimes not so small) change; and lying was/is in my DNA so that’s never bothered me either.

Cheating, though. That’s another story.

Shortcut to regret.

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