Back to the Stone: I was and continue to be very good at thinking up games. I can make a game or competition out of any event or mundane active. One quick example, then back to the rock. As my children and I wait in line for rides at amusement parks, my kids know the game is afoot when they see a penny in my hand...the object to get it into a stranger's pocket or purse without their knowledge. Let's say there are a lot of people who found coins where they least except to find them...my kids giggle and laugh at their father, and most of the time several other people (strangers ) join in the game. It makes the lines go by very quickly. The game that day involved several bottles and cans set- up across the street, at the end of Horton Hess' property and the beginning of Olin Sheriff's driveway. As cars would come along Main, generally at speeds of 40 to 50 mile per hour, we would pop up from the wall, throw a stone under the car, skipping it to hit the can or bottle. Simple right? WRONG! This became very hard to do. Often the stone would skip up into the under carriage of the cars. Loud clanks and clangs of noise would echo as the car motored down the road seldom stopping. Rural traffic was used to road debris and things bumping the bottoms of their cars.
The game was only to 25 points. One point for getting across the road under the car, one for hitting a target, double if by chance two cars were passing. It was my turn and there was the unmistakeable sound of the high pitch and speed of a VW Beetle pop, pop, pop engine coming down the road. My hand-eye coordination was very good and my arm strong (both would get me to start at third base in college and an invite the spring training camp for a professional baseball team). I could see the stone skipping, finding the old coke bottle and shattering it. I stood and threw, I heard the sound of glass explode...then the sound of rubber screeching, as brakes were roughly applied. The little VW came to a shaky stop when the driver's side window was shattered with my stone.
Well one of the other things I did well in my baseball career was steal bases and that didn't fail me now...I ran till I couldn't breathe. Then I just wandered for an hour or so till I thought It was safe to go home. As I approached home my spirits lifted because there in the drive was Dick and Ruby Brown's car. My father's car was also home, which meant card night...phew. When I walked into the house, sure enough a game of hearts was being played, but when my mother looked up at me there was not the usual pleasant expression on her face. She told me a gentlemen had stopped by that had a window busted out of his car, and that he was an off-duty county sheriff. Well, I had learned a new word on the playground at school and I wasn't sure I knew what it meant except you said it when you were in trouble, at least I thought...ooops. I simply and elegantly said, "oh F***." Yes, there aren't many other letters that go in there. Silence...lots of Silence. Poor Dick, one of the most gentle men that ever walked this earth, was actually blushing. Ruby was coughing, grasping for her water, dad had this half-smirk, half-mad face, and mom simply put her cards down and walked me down the long, narrow hall to the back bedroom to talk.
She asked where I had heard that word and if I knew the meaning. As you know, I could never keep anything from her so I told her what I knew. She explained how hurtful and damaging words like that can be. Then we were done... I was baffled and thought, "How can she not be mad at me?" She understood where I was in both my understanding of life and language. What I saw next I didn't like, for my mother's countenance seemed to change as we approached the subject of what happened with the car. As we talked, I began to realize that what I was seeing was disappointment. I knew that was not something I wished to ever cause her on purpose again. It wasn't the act of breaking the window, because accidents and poor choices happen everyday, but it's how we account for them that matters. That is what she was trying to teach me. See wasn't mad I broke the window, she was sad that I had ran away.
I saw that expression on my mother's face a couple more times in my life, due to my own lack of courage or stupidity, but fortunately I never let it go very long before making it right with mom. The real lesson of compassion and selfless love came a couple days later. The man returned with the estimate to repair the window. I met him and told him of the game I had been playing, apologized, and worked out a payment plan. What I didn't know was that the first night he came to the house my mother had told him it would go as such, with one other exception. For the next month, on each Wednesday after school for two hours, and Saturday for 4 hours, I was his farm hand to do whatever needed doing at his Farmington home. I was shocked! The man said, "well I'm not sure what a 10- year old boy can do." My mother agreed and simply said, "Then I will come and work also." We each put 24 hrs of labor into his garden. His wife was as mad as I have ever seen a woman be upset at a man...but by the end she and my mother were good friends. She often helped us in her garden and they both attended my my mother's funeral...
Gertudism #7 " God's greatest gift to his children is agency, God's greatest curse to a parent is giving his children agency."
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