COWPIE#1: Tell a Funny Childhood Story
When we were younger my parents would leave my sister, Emily, in charge if they ever both had to leave to run errands. She only got the job because she's 5 years older, which is actually age discrimination and should have been prohibited by equal opportunity laws. At any rate, I was some number of years away from any kind of familial-organizational restructuring (via college or marriage), so I swallowed my misgivings against my parents' business sense and channeled them towards my sister the way that only a little brother can.
One such occasion occurred shortly after my dad had just recently finished a homemade paddle, intended solely for me (I remember vividly watching through the glass patio door as he sawed the wood, whistling while he worked). Now, it wasn't long after Mom and Dad left that Emily imagined me to have done something wrong. (Creativity runs in the family.) She insisted I should get swats for it. From her. I respectfully declined, or something like that.
Nevertheless, she went and found the newly made, yet-to-be-broken-in paddle and began to yell at me to come get swats. Nope, I said. Yes, she said. Nope, nope, nope. Then the next part happened in slow motion: frustrated at her attempts to administer discipline in her newly acquired role as interim dictator, she raised the paddle to the sky and then smashed it to the ground. It broke, of course.
Emily and I looked at each other and instantaneously put aside our differences, because now there was a situation. We both knew a broken paddle would raise too many questions, so we raced to find the glue. Found it. Then we painstakingly applied it to the paddle and made sure it didn't leave marks. We did a pretty decent patch job and breathed a sigh of relief because we were able to finish all this before the 'rents returned.
Fast forward a few weeks. I was just going about business as usual, having a good time being myself when my Dad suddenly imagined me to have done something wrong. This time, there's no avoiding the paddle. (This was a conclusion I had gradually come to over time, through trial and error.) Dad gets the paddle. I assume the position. Here's the wind up, now the pitch (you know what's coming, right?)... the paddle splintered! Right down the fault line we had so carefully worked to conceal. Our cover blown, I braced for the moment when Dad's realization would become my annihilation. But the moment never came. Instead, Dad was laughing hysterically and my hindquarters were silently rejoicing at their multiple-swat reprieve.
It was months or years later, of course, when Dad was finally imparted a fuller understanding of why these events transpired as they did. But until that time, all that friends and family heard was the tale of Strong Arm and Solid Bottom.
1 comment:
Nice story. No, really. The next time I see you, you are soooo getting swats!
Post a Comment