• A loafer has one defining trait, and that is that he will stop at nothing to avoid doing work. Nothing. Not even doing more work.

    A loafer has preferences. He will avoid doing work that goes against his preferences, and go along (somewhat) with the work that does. How do I know this? I am a loafer.

    The reason I am willing to admit it is simply that I am too lazy to hide it. I would have to do an extreme amount to work to hide the fact that I am a loafer, and that would go against my ethics. But there are other things I will hide.

    Take cross-country, for instance. I joined the team, but I don’t like to run. At all. And since my parents don’t want me to run, and hate it when I don’t, I decided that both parties could be happy, after a fashion.

    My plan was (relatively) simple. Before my parents got home I would sneak into my backyard after taking the regular bus home, then come around the front and pretend that I had attended practice on the late bus. Foolproof. But, as I found out, not loafer proof.

    I came home on the regular bus. I had even changed into running clothes before leaving school. All according to plan.

    One thing I had not anticipated was my parents’ putting up a new, six-foot tall fence around our house. This could not simply be opened from the outside (unlike our neighbor’s fence, as I found out when I accidentally “picked” the lock on his fence and found myself in his backyard). The only way was to jump it.

    Most people would have just waited for their parents to come home and confessed that they had skipped practice. I was determined not to.

    So over the fence I went. I had to stand on a trash can to do it, but I got over it. I knew that I could get into my house from my backyard. So I did, returning outside with a watch so I could “come home” at the right time and a supply of snacks. Retiring to the most hidden corner of my backyard, I waited.

    The mosquitoes were still out, and enjoyed my blood immensely. I cannot say the say the same about them. By the time I was return to return to the front of the house I was completely covered in bites.

    Then I realized something. It was Thursday, which meant that my brother had writing class. He would not be home until hours after I was expected home. I could have stayed in my house, saved climbing over the fence, getting devoured by mosquitoes, and hiding.

    Sometimes it pays to be a loafer. Then again, sometimes it doesn’t.