Branded a Liar

The accounts I am about to tell really did happen, all on the same day. I tell you this tale as a warning to all the parents, parents to be, and guardians of small school aged children. Take this tale as a cautionary measure, and always remember sharing day!

 

My daughter expresses her joy for riding the bus. every time I see the orange shuttle coming up the street, my brain screeches back to the day in first grade when I was branded a liar and lost in transport.

 

School is tough and adjusting to the early hours and long days is even harder for a child of six. But it was Friday. The day every child will tell you they look forward to. No it's no the weekend, because when you are six having to spend a day with family isn’t half as fun as having to spend it with friends. IT'S SHARING DAY!

Sharing days are teacher’s sadistic way of getting the children to participate in class, get a break from teaching, and integrate some public speaking into the curriculum without a lesson plan being drawn up. But every child adores sharing day. Its a day to talk about themselves and have every one else OOOW! and AHHH! over them.

 

Classrooms, another invention of corralling children into the bigger plan, are big and small at the same time. Its a place were children strive to be liked by their peers so they don't feel the scary depth of the classroom. Every child wants to be liked by everyone, well at least I did. I wanted friends, more friends than the classroom could hold. So when the time came to share something we brought from home, I quickly realized I was the only one with nothing to share. So when the teacher called my name I decided it was best to say I wanted to share something that happened in my house last night. I stood in front of the class staring at all my friends and found that the words coming from my mouth were strange. My first out of body experience. It was a thrill and daring and the story grabbed the attention of all, including the aide who knew my family all too well.

 

My day was wonderful the story worked. I had the attention of all my classmates all day long. Ahhh friends. The time came to get ont he bus. I rode the bus with my aunt who was in sixth grade at the time, and my older brother. This is an important fact to remember. We lived in the country of a a small California town so it took any where from forty-five minuets to an hour to get from school to our road, at which time it would take another five or so minutes to walk to the house. The bus followed its regular path but upon turning down the street you take to get to my road the driver apparently got a CB radio call from another bus and for some reason they wanted to trade passengers.

 

It now became the challenge of all the kids to know if you belonged on that bus or this one. Confusing to write and confusing to live. My Aunt and brother all made it to the right bus, but my little six-year-old body was tired from my big play day and I had fallen asleep. Most children fall asleep on the seat but some how I had crawled to the floor and rested my head on the seat. Completely concealed I rode the bus through every stop and back to the bus depot, on the other side of the town. Dinner time passed by and my hungry stomach roared me awake just as the bus driver was making the "garbage" sweep. He found me and took me to the office. Apparently the incident with changing busses had made extra paperwork and the drivers were there late. Some decided to go home without cleaning the bus choosing instead to do it the next day. My driver wanted to sleep in.

Within the time of when I should have been home, and the time I was found my Mother, the police, and few others were frantically calling bus depots, schools, and anyone who had seen me. My bus driver called the number that was left for them and my Mother was soon there. She hugged me, yelled at me, and all the while I was confused as to why the heck I was at the bus house.

 

When we got home my Aunt and brothers were eating McDonalds. apparently the upset of the day caused us to eat out. YAY! My parents didn't have dinner for me though. BOO! My Father called me to stand in front of him. Apparently they heard my little story from school. I thought it was a good story...No longer frantic from my missing person they began the grueling task every parent hates...discipline…But my day made me cry and ask for them to forgive me and I was so glad they found me, and I was forgiven and sent to bed.

 

The story: My brother was playing with my Dads guns and shot a hole in the ceiling.

 

The back story: While bad on its own, a few months earlier my little brother was shot with a gun that my dad had just purchased from a yard sale. He almost died. The night before the fireplace, that had just been updated, caught fire and burned a big area on the roof.

 

The concerned Aide: Belonged to our church and talked the school into not calling CPS and letting her talk to my Mother instead. Upon hearing the truth I was branded a liar. But hey my story was so much more interesting than “our roof caught fire.” My parents have their own opinion.

 

 

It's not Kool-Aid

Age 4

         

I am sure this is where it all began. It was a warm spring day, not too warm, but hey its California so the sun has some heat to it. The countryside is rolling with amber waves of dead fields. In the faint distance you can hear a dog bark followed by the baying of the most annoying donkey ever. The clanking of the chain, placed on the top of our back door follows. Mom says the chain is "So the wind won't blow it away in the winter." We think it's so Mom and Dad can hear us when we come back in. We call it the warning. Once my brother said that if you open and shut the door really slow than they can't hear it, but decide that is too much work...hey when your excited to go out and play you hardly do anything slowly.

Today was like any other day, I followed my brother wherever he went. He was tired of that so he devised a plan to make it stop. Next to our horse barn was a large, round, rusted, metal barrel. Upon closer inspection it was more than rusted it was very old. The barrel had a little spicket on the bottom allowing for liquid to be removed. What liquid would be kept in a rusty ol' barrel? As kids are very curious we decided to inspect it. Only now do I realize that my brother already knew what was inside. I still don’t know if it was he had been planning it for a while or if the boy was a master mind at “making it up as we go along.” He stood by the barrel and called me and my cousin over.  

“So I heard Mom and Dad talking about this barrel last night.” He was smiling, but it didn’t strike me as a mischievous kind of smirk. Not like at that age I would have known the difference. “They said they keep the grape Kool-Aid here so we won’t sneak it in the middle of the night! Tell ya what you put your mouth under here and I will move this thing and the Kool-Aid will come out.” I was so excited. I heard once that Kool-Aid was crack for kids. It’s funny because it’s true. I loved Kool-Aid, and grape Kool-Aid was to me like the crack you buy that hasn’t been cut with anything and cost like a thousand dollars a snort. On hind site I should have been worried that he was going to share his gold with us. He was after all the one who found it, and in childhood we are all pirates when it comes to “finders, keepers.” The cunning behavior of my brother would have made Black Beard himself look like an angel. So here I was with my face under the barrel looking at the spicket wondering when the beautiful taste of purple heaven would cascade in my mouth. There was a funny smell but my brother assured me it was the old barrel rusting from all the sugar in the Kool-Aid. He opened the spicket and the gold that flowed from the rusty faucet was not purple but amber, a mixture of gasses for the farm tractor. Before my four-year-old brain could register the taste I had drank a few cups of the gas. The trick worked I was no longer my brothers shadow.

 

             I went inside the house telling Mom I didn’t feel well. Upon my arrival my mother could smell the reason for my sickness. Not knowing what to do she immediately feed me bread, trying to soak up the fuel in my stomach. As I began to throw up my cousin entered the room complaining of the same stomach upset. After administering the bread and having no reaction my parents rushed me and my cousin to the hospital. They were able to pump my cousins stomach but the real worry was me. Un be knownst to my mother inducing vomiting for gas ingestion was a big no no. The vomit would cause the gas to become a vapor and as I gagged to vomit again and again the gas vapor would enter my lungs and burn the little sacs I need to exchange oxygen into my body. After several tests and a few administrations of O2 it was determined that I would be scared for life. I would develop asthma, there was no doubt about it, and may have a hard time if ever I was to contact pneumonia. My mother was told, like any other wound, my lungs would need healing.

I think huffing the fumes of the gas damaged my brains ability to think things through entirely before committing myself to an action. So I blame this incidence for all the other things that I stupidly will do from this day on. Yes I stopped following my brother around, well for at least a while. He had left his God status on that rusty barrel and from that day on he was as annoying to me as I was to him.