Tom Sawyer

I was amused to share The Adventures of Tom Sawyer with the son of my classmates last Sunday. The story is almost funny – except that it's not.

When we look hard enough, we can find ourselves symptomatic of what Tom Sawyer had demonstrated as a professional trickster. This condition is highly contagious, I guarantee, and not easily reversed.

It's all very well for those of us who make mistakes now and then, like what Tom Sawyer did most of the time. And it's nice to laugh at others' blunders. Still, it would then be surprising to find out that we grown-ups have been practicing the three very basic approaches of Tom Sawyer after making a mistake (before he was caught red-handed by Aunt Polly, of course). The first one, as recently described by the senior ethics adviser Julian Sheather, is to run away as far as possible and pretend it hadn't happened. Secondly, if the first trick is unsuccessful, one is to surreptitiously hunt around to see if responsibility for the mistake couldn't be handed over to someone else, or at the very least shared with them. For heaven's sake, what is the third and bravest approach, then? To try and find a way of making out that it isn't really a mistake at all.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that we grown-ups are even more laughable than Tom Sawyer. And, if you don't believe that adults behave similar to Tom Sawyer, well, look around. Leave yourself room to be surprised.