The Curse

I was talking with a friend today and he said that he hoped his kid had a child as wild as his son was. I thought that sounded strange and asked him why. He responded that he would love for his child to understand what he had been put through raising him. I had a flash back to all of the stupid things I have done as a child but one stuck out big time, I do not know why but it did.

I thought back to when I was 10 and my younger brother was 6, we were both sick with the flu. My father was the preacher at our church so we NEVER missed unless we were just about dead. After much consultation and checking with neighbors my father left us as home with the understanding that the neighbor was coming over in one minute. Before he left my I had asked my dad if we could catch birds using a string tied to a stick and an old cardboard box. He laughed knowing that never works and said sure and he set the box up and took the string through the sliding door and said pull it when you have a bird.

We tried this right after they left and of course the bird flew away before the box came down. Now I did love my dad but I did not always listen to him. The neighbor had not shown up yet so I decided that a laundry basket would come down quicker because there would be less air pressure. So, we put seeds in the snow under the basket and tried again. This time we almost caught a bird but the basket came down to slow.

My brother pointed out that if we hurried we could but a brick on the basket and try one more time before the sitter came from next door. So we hunted down a brick and set the trap one more time. We waited impatiently for the birds knowing at any moment the sitter would be there. Soon a flock of birds were feasting on the seeds we had laid as a trap and POW!!! we pulled the string and had a half a dozen birds in under the basket.

This made me and my brother excited because now we could have 6 pet birds. We tried to quickly figure out how to get the birds in the house without letting them go. I decided we could slide a piece of cardboard under the basket and have a little cage for them. Now please understand, I was sick and 10 years old so I was not thinking clearly. I did not think of using the box we had originally use as a trap but instead my brother and I ran 2 blocks to get a box from out of a trash can behind a store. We ran barefooted through the snow not feeling the bite of the freezing snow because we had a flock of birds that were now ours.

We returned, no sitter yet, and pushed the cardboard under the basket and brought the screaming birds into our house, down the hall and into our bedroom. We waited for the birds to calm down and decided that we were now there owners and we should be allowed to pet them. We slowly removed the basket and as expected we now had a flock of birds flying in our room.

My brother and I decided we probably should go to bed and wait for the sitter (who never came). We talked trying to figure out if we should tell my dad that our room had 6 birds flying around in it or if we should just hope that when spring hit we could open the window and let them fly off on their own.

My father and mother were both great, we did get in trouble but they never cursed us with that old saying "I hope you have children just like you". I did ask him about it many years later, why had he not said that when so many other parents would say it. He looked at me with a straight face and said "I would never want to have grand kids that was as wild as you boys, I wanted to have normal grandchildren that I could take in public"..... was he joking?