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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I very much prefer to write with an old fashioned wooden pencil over any type of pen, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’ll share a childhood story that involved sweet, delicious, Halloween candy.
Friday Forum
We made it to hump day and that means that tomorrow is your last chance to submit a contribution for this week’s Friday Forum. I would love to hear stuff that you’ve learned and share it with the other listeners. It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long. It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others. You can participate in Friday Forum by calling and leaving a message at 304-837-2278, emailing an audio file to feedback@goldenspiralmedia.com, or clicking on the Send Voicemail tab on my website, GoldenSpiralMedia.com.
What I Learned Yesterday:
As I mentioned in an earlier episode, my parents divorced when I was 9. My dad remarried later that year, in December I think. Sometime after my parents divorced and before the next school year started, my dad moved us into a rent house in a small town. It was the town that my soon to be step-mom and her two kids lived.
I was going into 4th grade, my step-brother would be in 5th grade, my brother would be in 6th grade, and my step-sister would be a senior. Once my step-sister graduated high school she moved off to college and we only saw her occasionally. So for the most part, our home was just the three of us boys, each one grade apart.
During the time of that first school year when my dad and stepmom had not yet married, we were instructed to go to her house immediately after school. She lived right across the street from the school so this made sense. We would hang out with my soon to be step siblings and other neighborhood kids. Our parents would arrive home from work a couple of hours later and we’d have dinner. Eventually we’d go back to our house for the night.
This worked well and I didn’t mind not going home after school. There wasn’t much to do there anyway. But as every kid knows, between the time school starts and our favorite holiday, Christmas, sits one of the tastiest days of the year, Halloween. That year Halloween was great. I felt like I had scored the mother lode of candy. The only problem was, my dad made me keep it at our house, and we were specifically told not to go there after school. This created a problem for me.
Now it was also around this time that I became fascinated with fire. Both my dad and stepmom were smokers so we always had lighters, lighter fluid, and matches around the house. For some reason my dad did not approve of me setting things on fire. Something about not wanting to set the house on fire or some nonsense like that.
One day after school I decided that I would go over to our house and sneak some candy. It was less than half a mile away, so I figured it would be quick and easy to go grab some sugary snacks and get back over to where I was supposed to be without anyone noticing. I didn’t tell my brothers what I was doing, I just did it.
My plan worked perfectly. No one saw me slip away and I quickly arrived home. I was completely alone. Before I grabbed the candy I needed to answer nature’s call. As I got ready to leave the bathroom I noticed the roll of toilet paper and thought it would be cool to catch it on fire. I knew that I needed to do it in a way that didn’t get me caught or burn down the house.
My solution? Hold a few sheets of toilet paper up above the toilet, catch them on fire, and then drop them into the water. It seemed like the perfect plan. When I was done I’d simply flush away the evidence. My plan was again executed perfectly. It turned out that catching toilet paper on fire wasn’t really that interesting. After a few sheets were burned I was bored. I flushed them away, grabbed some candy and headed back to where I was supposed to be.
The rest of the afternoon and evening was uneventful. No one noticed that I had slipped away or gotten into my candy. We had dinner and then headed home. However, when we arrived home, things changed.
My dad sat me and my brother down on the couch and asked us which one of us had burned toilet paper in the bathroom. My brother got this really confused look on his face. What in the world was dad talking about? Someone burned up some toilet paper? Who does that? He looked at me. Naturally, I only had one option: lie. I got a confused look on my face. What in the world was dad talking about? Someone burned up some toilet paper? Who does that?
My brother told the truth and told my dad that he had no idea what he was talking about and said that he didn’t do it. I lied and said that it wasn’t me either. Inside my head I’m trying to figure out how dad found out. One of us asked dad why he thought that someone burned up some toilet paper in the bathroom. Apparently dad came home before he went over to our stepmom’s house and my perfectly concealed burning spree had not been as perfectly concealed as I thought. Not all of the ash had made its way into the toilet. Some of it landed around the commode and I had failed to notice. What would I do now?
Well, I had already started the lie. I decided my best option now was to perpetuate it. My dad asked my brother if he had done it. My brother told the truth and denied it. Dad asked me, and I lied. Dad told us that he knew that one of us was guilty and if the guilty party didn’t confess, he’d get the paddle and spank us both. My dad’s paddle was hand crafted by him. The handle was just the right size for his grip and it was designed to bring severe discomfort to the backside. No one wanted to be on the receiving end of his paddle.
He asked us again. My brother looked at me with a look that said, “man, if you did this you’d better fess up right now.” I was in too deep to turn back now. I denied any knowledge of the charred debris.
My dad took my brother, bent him over, and delivered a couple of well placed swats to his back side. My brother, now crying from the quite literal pain in his butt, sat down beside me. Now it was my turn. I stood up, bent over, readied myself, and took the swats. I too began crying from the pain and I took my place back on the couch.
My dad again asked which one of us was the culprit, but no confession came. He took my brother, spanked him again, and my brother sat back down. I then suffered another round of paddling. Again and again this went on round after round. No confession, only throbbing from my backside. My brother continued to tell the truth, and I continued to lie. My dad only had circumstantial evidence and I knew that he’d have to give up eventually.
And eventually he did give up. He finally saw that neither of us was going to confess, and sent us off to bed. For some reason, I felt like I’d actually won. If my butt could talk, I think it would have disagreed.
Fifteen years or so passed. My brother was now in the Army and I was living in Wichita Falls, Texas. My brother was getting pretty serious with the girl he’d been dating and he was thinking about marriage. He called me one night to discuss it. She had a young son from a previous relationship and we talked about the challenges of being married and the added challenges of having a child in the mix.
My brother was really serious about this decision and wanted to make sure it was the right one. At one point we started talking about disciplining children and some of the things we’d experienced as kids. He said that looking back on our childhood, he thought dad had done a good job with us. He said there were only two times that he could think of where dad was totally off base. One time was when our parents were still married and we broke a lamp. I agreed that dad was out of line. That’s actually a good story. I’ll share it with you sometime.
He went on to say that the second time was when dad somehow had this idea that one of us had burned up some toilet paper in the bathroom and keep giving us spankings until one of us confessed. He said that dad was completely wrong about it.
I erupted into to laughter. I told my brother that I had burned up the toilet paper and that dad was not wrong. I didn’t want to get in trouble for setting stuff on fire so I lied about it.
My brother was not laughing. He was shocked. He couldn’t believe that after all the years, he was just now discovering the truth. He told me that if we were in the same place, he’d kick my butt. I continued to laugh, quite amused by my successful cover up. My brother soon started laughing too. Now we openly joke about it.
Here’s what I learned. I learned that I could lie to my parents and get away with it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a lesson, that was a trap. There’s a lot more to that story, and I’ll share that one day too.
Honestly, I don’t know what I learned from this story. Yes, my brother and I can look back on it now and laugh. In a way, I suppose it created a bonding moment for us, but I think that he and I would both agree that it would have been better if I’d never lit fire to toilet paper that day.
My hope is that in sharing this story with you today, I’ve brought a smile to your face. We all need to laugh from time to time, and I feel like the stories I’ve shared have been heavy. I felt like this show needed a moment to exhale and laugh.
Maybe your life is like that right now. Don’t forget to smile and laugh from time to time. No, take time to smile and laugh everyday. After all, laughter is the best medicine.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes or Stitcher.
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