Rebel with a Cause: 5 Rules I Love to Break

Some rules are there for a reason, like safety rules and looking both ways before you cross the street. Other rules, often the kind that are passed down as current trends or societal norms, can sometimes be tested or questioned. As a long time rule breaker, the line between following all the rules and breaking some often blurs for me. The following rules are the ones I most often break.

I Sleep with the Television On
My mother cringes when I tell her I end up sleeping with the television on most nights. In fact, according to some rule books, I shouldn't even have a television in the bedroom, but I do. In fact, my favorite part of the night is my pre-bedtime television channel surf. I don't really even plan on watching anything in particular, but I've discovered some of the most mindless television shows surfing channels at 2 am. So mindless, in fact, that they serve the purpose of getting me to fall asleep. There are nights when infomercials have made their way into my dreams, but the no television rule at bedtime is one I will continue to break.

I Have Always Colored Outside the Lines
My Kindergarten teacher used to tell us to color inside the lines. She said that grass should be green and skies should be blue. It wasn't a lack of fine motor coordination that made me color rainbow dogs and purple landscapes but a large dose of childhood creativity that made me challenge the coloring rules. To this day, my mind still sees a world where imagination reigns. Coloring inside the lines and keeping grass green and skies blue are somebody else's rules.

I Won't Suffer to be Beautiful
In high school when other teens were getting up two hours early to get ready for school, I was sleeping in. Early memories of sleeping in sponge rollers for school pictures and my mother's reminder that we had to suffer to be beautiful made me question this rule. I did my turn at getting the popular spiral perms in the 80's, sitting still for 4 hours while a patient hairstylist rolled layer after layer of my long hair and we both breathed in an awful smell of chemicals. I refuse to suffer anymore for the sake of beauty. No fad diets, no skinny lattes at Starbucks, and certainly no more painful hairstyling procedures for the sake of looking better. Ultimately we are all beautiful, with or without the 10 extra pounds or beauty tortures.

I Question Authority
It must be the rebel gene I carry, but I have been questioning authority since I was able to verbalize complete sentences. I am not alone. Since the beginning of time people have broken this rule, often asking questions and seeking answers for why certain rules existed in the first place. I dislike the no questioning authority rule and will continue to accept any consequences that come my way.

I Wear White After Labor Day, Eat After 6 pm, and Let My Gas Tank Hit E
The number of conventional rules can make me dizzy some days. Thankfully, I tend to live on the edge and forget half of them so I have days when rule breaking reaches new highs. Fashion rules of yesteryear like the no white after Labor Day rule don't hold up well when nearly everyone in South Beach has a closet full of white year round. I may not live in South Beach but I refuse to put away my whites until Spring.

Some of my best times have been snacking in front of the television watching my favorite shows at night. It's not that I don't realize that eating after 6 pm is discouraged, but the benefits of enjoying a good snack on a cold winter night in front of the TV outweights any nutritional advice or rule. My gas tank also runs on near empty some days. Between the high gas prices and not paying enough attention to the little gas tank needle, I sometimes forget to stop and fill up. I've said Hail Marys a few times driving home, hoping to reach a gas station before I ran out of gas. Only once have I actually run out, however.

Ultimately, everyone breaks the rules at some point in their lives. The rules we choose to break can be anything from conventional rules to fashion rules, and many of those are subjective. As long as I color outside the lines, sleep with the television on, and refuse insane beauty treatments, I will consider myself a rebel with a cause.