“Dammit!” I yelled in disbelief. “No, no, no! This cannot be happening to me. Oh jeez. What am I going to do now?”
The exact words that I mumbled as I stared at the cracked glass of my dad’s 1981 Chevy Luv. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it. It just wasn’t fair. A great amount of fear plunged into the deepest pits of my stomach releasing an extreme amount of anxiety and discontent. It was less than a week ago that my karate instructor had given me this special gift. A gift that every twelve-year-old teen would want, a BB gun. Not even a week goes by and I’m breaking glass.
My mind was discombobulated. My heart jumped into my throat and throbbed into every single extremity of my body; and to top it all, I had to tell my parents. I basically had three ways of notifying them of this catastrophe:
PLAN A: Act cool, calm, and collected as I casually enter the room. Boldly tell them that my new toy had a slight accident. Apologize.
PLAN B: Wait a day. The following morning I would say that I heard weird noises in the back yard. Possibly suggest that it was a moose. Wait another day. As I went to get the Iawnmower, I spot the crackled and crumpled glass.
Note: Should this plan fall through, I could always say my BB gun ricocheted and totally went in the opposite direction it was being aimed or that the manufacturing company made an error.
Then of course there was:
PLAN C: Tell them the truth. Not a good idea. First I would get the “I’m dumb and irresponsible lecture”; then I would have to pay for it.
So I decided to go with plan B. The first thing I had to do was call my dad and tell him about some miscellaneous noises I heard the previous night. Right then I was really sweating. I didn’t do anything but sit and pray that this would be okay. It was sort of like this “I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again” kind of plea. I was utterly petrified. I made the call.
“Yeah, and it sounded like a creeeaak and then there was a thud and it lasted for quite a while too!” I said in a nervous and exaggerated voice.
“Yeah son, it was probably ‘em damn moose again.”
“Sure, yeah, that’s what it was! I should’ve guessed.”
Sweet! Everything was working perfectly. Then again I had only accomplished a small part of the plan, or rather, a piece of the puzzle. So I slept on it for a couple of days. I had to think of a way to tact it. I had to firmly stick to the plan. I felt like I was a murderer in some weird novel where I am constantly thinking of lies and theories only to cover myself from the law. Only in this case, the law was my parents.
Two days later:
“Dad, dad, you’ll never guess what happened. The moose broke the back window of the truck,” I said in a panicky tone. Luckily I told him on the phone so I didn’t have to hear him shout all those dirty obscenities that someone my age would never say. Man that made me tense. Just the vision I had in my head was enough to give insomnia to a child for days, his eyes as big as pizzas, his veins bulging out of his neck, teeth clenching and contracting, and his spitting upon every word that escaped his mouth. I shuddered and tried to wipe the image from my mind so that I might even be able to sleep.
A wave of paranoia, dread, and fear crept over me. Suddenly I was restless. I jumped up and paced my room shaking wildly like a person with epilepsy. What if he found out? What if he grounded me for the rest of my life? Should I pack a bag and run away? These horrid thoughts and questions ran within me, swarming like bees over a beehive, until one question stung me right in the back of my head:
Don’t most kids do something really stupid on accident that really pisses their parents off? Then a week later the childhood dilemma is forgiven, forgotten, and only welcome to come back when you need a good laugh? Why all this nonsense and worry? Let’s face it, I was dumb and irresponsible.
My dad came home from work and looked at the window, and I just sat there wallowing in my sorrow, and solemnly stared at the crackled, cobwebby mess, and then at my hands who bickered back and forth shaking in an uncontrollable fury. I noticed my dad was staring at me. He knew. There was no doubt about it, and I knew that he knew. Then he knew, that I knew, that he knew. But before either one of us could say anything, my mom came out.
“Well would you look at that,” she said in an overly dramatic voice. “That moose is going to have to pay for this... out of his own allowance! Our poor little moose is probably not going to have any money for a long time,” she joked. It was pretty funny.
That night after my dad told me I was dumb and irresponsible, my mom asked my dad if he had secured the gate.
“No,” he replied. “Why? We never have before.”
“I know, but I just don’t want that BB-gun-toting moose to break any more of our windows,” she said. Then she cackled hysterically as if she just said something funny. My dad and I just stared at her in puzzlement.
Well, in all honesty I really didn’t learn anything from this incident. I already knew that lying was bad. I knew that doing something really stupid couldn’t compete with a parent’s undying love for their kid, and I definitely knew that anyone can be dumb and irresponsible. It is in our nature. The window was only 80 dollars and my parents were actually pretty understanding. In a way, I’m not really sorry I did it. After this experience, I knew that I didn’t have to lie. That is what gets people into more trouble. Now I can go to my parents for anything, and they will hear me out before they even think of a punishment. As my dad says, “It’s all part of growing up.”
And that concludes the tale of the gun-toting moose.
