Just So I Can Tell People That I Did It - written by Alfred (a short story for kids)

Once upon a time there lived a 12 year old boy named Jonas. He wasn’t a Christian but the thing was that he had never really gotten the opportunity to really hear about Christ in-spite of the fact that he lived in America. 

He always flipped by Christian TV channels because the presentation of their message never did appeal to him. He was more interested in heading for the cartoon channels to even stop and listen a bit to the Christian channels. And as far as hearing the gospel through traditional mediums went, it was quite impossible seeing that due to certain legislations the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus has been greatly streamlined and is closely monitored in every school by carefully hidden watchdog groups.   

Jonas’ parents weren’t Christians, they weren’t even around 80% of the time. They always had some place away from Jonas that they had to be. They were rich but not yet millionaires. They pretty much left Jonas to raise himself even though they left him in the care of maids and butlers who easily got fired. I bet his parents didn’t even for a second think that they needed to spend time with their son. He was just someone that they provided for but clearly didn’t have any time in their busy schedules for.   

In school Jonas started hanging with the wrong friends. Friends that were from a much much poorer background who were always getting into trouble with the school authorities. There was something about their rebellion – their defiance of the norm – their rock & roll attitude that appealed deeply to Jonas.   

Jonas soon became friends with them. It took time before they officially accepted him as one of them. But now he was talking like them – acting like them – and getting into trouble often like them. Jonas was now a popular trouble maker in school. Of course his parents couldn’t know about it because they were too busy with their own lives to take a look at what was happening in the lives of their own son.   

Jonas and his friends weren’t a gang. It was just a peer group of incorrigible lovers of trouble making. They didn’t seem to mind getting detention.   

One day, a teacher risked the fact that there was no preaching and changing the lives of kids who are heading down the wrong path allowed in American schools, and the teacher called all the trouble makers together and talked to them about Jesus. She told them about God’s love for them and about the path to destruction they were on. She told them that they could do better than this. She spoke by the Spirit of God and delivered the most touching sermon so rich in love and wisdom that even a hardened criminal won’t react emotionless to it. 

However for some reason, it didn’t seem to touch the boys. Rather they waited for her to finish speaking and then reported her to the principal and also to the ACLU just in case the principal wasn’t going to do anything about it.   

The teacher ended up getting kicked out of the school and the ACLU made sure that it was on the news and looked like a local school teacher had done a really shameful thing. 

However, what one man thinks is something to be ashamed of, another man thinks it is something to be proud of. 

Christians in the community quickly applauded the teacher’s acts and she was quickly employed by a private Christian school that paid her a lot more money than her previous school. A church even gave her an award for standing up for what’s right in the face of insanity.   

Jonas and his friends looked like victims and heroes at the same time to the ACLU. And can you imagine that Jonas parent’s were so self absolved that they didn’t know any of this happened. They didn’t watch local news (which I can’t say is unwise), they didn’t ask their son how his day in school went (which is super self-fish if you ask me), and they didn’t have any relationship whatsoever with anyone who had a kid in the same school their son went to (how would they when they never attended PTA meetings?).   

As Jonas grew a bit older and still hung out with the same peers, they started doing really stupid things like spray painting the principal’s car, shop lifting candy from stores and even spreading rumors about other students. This they did all for fun. This is what gave them fun. They had been bad for so long that they saw nothing wrong with it and they didn’t seem like they could live without it.   

One day, one of Jonas’ friends came up with the idea that they should move their game to a whole other level and rob a supermarket.   

Jonas was skeptical of this, he had had no problem with being bad before but this was something else. He was like, “I don’t know guys..”   

But Jonas’ friends convinced him that he should join them for their little adventure. They told him that he is young now and should feel free to break the rules and do whatever he wanted to do now so later in life he can change and then become good having experienced everything there is to experience and then when he sees younger people who claim to be bad doing something bad he can tell them that he’s done it before. He can look at them and say been there done that.   

This stupid reason made sense to Jonas and so he agreed to join them in their plan to rob a supermarket.   

On that appointed day they had chosen to rob a supermarket, Jonas stood outside the supermarket with his friends and with a gun concealed in his sweat jacket pockets. He shock off any remaining doubts and fear. He was going to do this. He was going to do this for the thrill of it and enjoy every moment of it so he can look back later in life when he see others do it and say been there done that.   

Jonas and his friends walked into the supermarket and minutes later they had everyone at gun point. Some of Jonas’ friends were collecting stuff they liked while one was collecting the money in the cash register and for a moment Jonas was kinda standing alone. His number one fear that the cops would show up had just resurfaced. What if someone triggered a silent alarm or something he would be in deep soup. He would be neck deep in soup.   

Suddenly, someone rushed at Jonas, he had planned to take Jonas by surprise but out of fright Jonas shot. Jonas killed the man.   When the shot rang out all of Jonas friends stopped all what they were doing and turned to the direction the sound of the gun shot came from. They saw Jonas with the dead man at his feet. They were shocked – afraid – very afraid; they had known Jonas had crossed a line from which their was no return. 

They immediately left everything and ran out of the supermarket. They left Jonas standing there confused with a dead man at his feet. They abandoned Jonas.   

Jonas didn’t run. He knew there was no point in running. He had just killed a guy. The police won’t rest until they found him. Things were different now. He was a kid who had just killed someone. He fell to his knees and cried out to God for help. 

However, it was kinda too late for that because he was still going to face the consequences for what he had just done. If only he had known he would have asked God to come into his life earlier when the school teacher talked to him and his friends.

THE END.