Barking Space

Childhood Tales

Patresa has started a little collection of stories told by bloggers about their childhoods. It’s pretty funny what people are willing to share, and qutie amusing to read. Go and check it out! If you have a blog you should participate.

I like some of these ideas, because you get to see people’s various styles of writing. So, without further ado…

When We Were Short and Stupid

I had recently come of age to be able to baby-sit my brothers. My parents had gone out for the evening and would be back later on that same night. They left me in charge, and I was feeling pretty important.

The evening was fun. I have two brothers, and we are close enough in age to enjoy a lot of the same things. I don’t remember exactly what we did, but it probably would have involved watching some TV, playing some video games, and probably something related to Star Wars.

Soon the time came to put the two younger guys to bed.

The thing that sucks about babysitting your own siblings is that they don’t look at you as an authority figure*. They look at you as their brother (who you’ve just been playing games and watching TV with).

One brother was ready to hit the sack but the other was being more resistant. He goofed around, and refused to do what I asked. I was getting annoyed, as I knew I would get in trouble if my parents found him awake. I was running out of options.

So, I picked up a chair (one of the older heavy office-type chairs) and raised my voice. What I said next sealed my fate…

If you don’t go to bed I swear I’ll throw this at you, and you’ll be sorry.

He paused for a second, calming down and wondering if I was telling the truth. I wouldn’t have thrown it if I wanted to. I’m just not that kind of guy. However, I needed to be more convincing, so I took a menacing step towards him, and he shrank back a little.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t see the toy car on the floor in front of me. I slipped and ended up lurching forward and then back, inadvertently hurling the chair. My brother screamed. The chair didn’t really go near him, but bounced off of one of the beds, and then over the gap to the other, and then into the wall, leaving a sizeable hole.

We all went silent.

And then everyone started crying (I was teary-eyed at the prospect of fatherly rage).

Needless to say they agreed to go to bed, fearful that I would start throwing larger objects at them (I doubt they knew it was an accident at the time). I ran to the garage and got the Poly-Fix and did a really poor job of patching up the wall, while my brothers lay in bed under the covers, drying their eyes on their pajama sleeves.

My parents came home, and I tried to hide the damage, but realized that it would eventually be found out, so I confessed. My parents were pretty angry at all of us. They were mad at my brothers for not listening, and were mad at me for throwing objects around the house (they didn’t believe it was a freak accident).

In the end, though, there was no real punishment.

Fear was quite enough, thank you very much…

* – I’ve discovered that this also holds true if you are the official photographer at a wedding involving a family member. No one listens to you.

Filed under: Anecdotes, Spaces Archive | 6 Comments »