First Last

AP English Lang. 12A

Mrs. Last

21 October 2004

On the Crumbling Pillar of Citizenship: A Bad Neighbor

Knock knock.  I glanced out the cloudy window of my parlor and saw an old delivery truck parked in front of my lawn.  I unbolted the leaded-glass door to see a stubby-necked uniformed man already walking back to his delivery van.  Staring down, I picked up a roughly handled, poorly marked package.  Scrutinizing the badly scratched manifest label, I realized it was a misdelivery.  I instinctively raised my hand to flag down the delivery man, but when I looked up, the diesel truck had already swooped away out of sight. 

With a sort of helpless feeling, I tried to decipher the mangled address label again and made out my neighbor’s name, Mr. Bailey.  Mr. Bailey lived across the street from me and resided on a near identical numerical address.  He was a well-mannered, scholarly gentleman, and I respected his perfectionism greatly.  I could not imagine our relationship to be the cause of what I was about to do.  Yet I felt a queer irregularity of the property of an impeccably flawless man landing at my feet.  To be precise, I assumed an unconditional right to his misdelivered article.  

With fiend-like speed, I tore the box apart to reveal its precious cargo.  Nestled safely within the beaten container was a beautiful porcelain doll.  Its miniature garment was sewn in soft silk, and the name ‘Amy’ was carefully embroidered on the breast.  I greedily put my fingers around the soft garment and lifted the doll out of the box.  It was the kind that had the bobbing eyes which flashed at you when you moved it.  I ran my finger across the expensive face, appraising its value.  Trying to complement my home, I set the fine article atop the mantelpiece of my fireplace, next to my family pictures.  Despite the foreign name written on the figurine’s front shirt, I unconsciously tried to merge the valuable object with the rest of my assets.  As an admiration of my handiwork, I then gazed steadily at the object.  Its glassy eyes, a bobbing menace, were still flashing at me from the kinetic motion I exerted on it.  It made me think of when Mr. Bailey would come over and ask me to return his doll.      

Each person only has finite orchestration of their environment, I thought.  Beyond that, one was not morally bound to the results of anything that happened.  I used this reasoning to justify my not returning the package to Mr. Bailey.  Furthermore, Mr. Bailey was a lettered man, and surely he could not be caught innocently deprived in knowledge of this natural philosophy.  I was not cheating him because he knew the moral and legal system as well as I did.  I whispered this dogma aloud as I tried to justify my action.  However, my mouth began to run somewhat dry, and I breathed irregularly.  The newly acquired doll blurred in and out of focus, and I struggled to see if its eyes were still flashing at me.  Every time I meditated on the word ‘righteous’ to quell my inner turbulence, a cold chill ran through my spine.  I focused intensely to make moral right and legal right coincide, but they were like a broken magnet that could not be pushed back together.  The repeated failure of my mind to justify morality with legitimacy sent repeated convulsions down my limbs.  A cold sweat ran down my neck.  It was as if my body was trying to perspire but it could not. 

I flung myself to the middle of the room.  Damn it! It cannot be done!  The springs and gears in my moral engine had striped itself and burst off its axle.  I began to perspire vigorously.  In an exhaustive mental breakdown, I felt an epiphany.  I had tripped over a crucial flaw in society.  An interdependent society will fail in a policy where humans act on selfish individualism.  Each person must exhibit mutual citizenship to serve as the bridge between people.  Not only did I deprive my neighbor of his property, but I realized that this ill action could be reciprocated against me just as easily.  It was from that moment on that I eased some of my egocentricity and gave myself to human cooperation.  I knew how to be a decent neighbor and a good citizen.

[ Valedictorian Essays ] [ About the Essay Writers ] [ Our Policy ] [ Custom Essays ] [ Free Essays ] [ Links ] [ Can't Pay? ]