Embarrassing Admission #49

When I was 11, my family built a house and moved from our kid-packed neighborhood out to the middle of the country. Before we began construction, we spent countless, intolerable hours (for a kid) “visiting the property.” I suppose my parents were surveying the 38 acres for a perfect building spot, etc., but my brother and I cared nothing for those details. We explored all the woods and streams there were to see and tried to keep ourselves occupied. We shot fire ant hills with our sling shots. One night—I don’t know where Charlie was—out of boredom, I thought it would be a good idea to play with the mace in my mother’s purse. Pretty soon…yes, you guessed it. It ended the only way it could have, with me accidentally spraying myself in the face. I have to give it to myself, though. I bore it in silence, and my mom didn’t find out until many years later.

I suffered other impunities while waiting around there at “the property,” but those shall be revealed in future entries.