The question to answer in your entry post is simple:
Tell us about a powerful truth, or a terrible lie.
Art, poetry, video and out-of-the-box answers encouraged.
Punishment in my childhood was rather severe compared to today’s standards. It was a physical beating sometimes with a stick/branch from a tree. The stick would be one you were told to cut yourself and bring back to a parent to be used for your punishment. Mistakingly, I would look for the thinnest stick or branch from a tree. That thin switch could really sting across the back of the legs.
The point is, because of this harsh punishment, I would sometimes lie if I got in trouble. The one lie I remember distinctly took place, when I was about eleven years old, over an incident at my grandmother’s house.
My uncle who also lived there had a small rack on a stand beside the radio that held his smoking pipes. My cousin and I were alone in the house and I suggested we smoke one of the pipes. Yes, it was me always getting in trouble and bringing my cousin along with me.
Bobby and I filled the pipe with tobacco and light it. We took a few puffs, coughing and hacking. Then we spied our uncle walking on the road towards the house.
I grabbed the pipe and tapped it against the doorstep thinking this would knock the tobacco out of it and no one would be the wiser that we had smoked it.
Well, the tapping did knock the tobacco out but also broke the pipe. Bobby looked terrified.
”You better hid it as Uncle Sam will be furious at us!”
I ran to the vegetable garden and buried it in the soil. All this was done before Uncle Sam reached the house. After the burial, I hightailed it home which was half a mile from my grandmother’s house. Looking back I left my cousin to deal with any fallout. Bobby lived with my grandmother and Uncle Sam.
My grandmother’s house was always a welcome refuge and I went back the next day. I was questioned by Uncle Sam as soon as I got in the door. His favorite pipe was missing and he wanted to know if I had anything to do with it.
”No, I don’t know anything about your pipe.”
I vehemently denied having any knowledge of his pipe.
“Who planted it in the garden, if you didn’t, Joanna?*
I was still denying anything to do with the pipe when he finally told me I might as well give it up as Bobby had told him what happened.
Apparently when Uncle Sam walked into the house he could smell the pipe smoke and immediately went to his pipe rack and spotted the empty spot. It didn’t take long to get the truth out of Bobby.
I got a lecture from Uncle Sam about using other people’s property and the sin of telling lies.
Luckily for me, I was spared any punishment. Neither my grandmother or Uncle Sam told my parents about my involvement with the broken pipe or my lie.
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