Me

I think every kid has that one experience, where they run away or get subtle revenge on their parents or do what grown-ups often call “sticking it to the man.”

 

I stuck it to the man (dad) once – and it involved the two greatest athletic feats I’ve ever accomplished.

 

Let me set the arena for these grand Olympic-worthy endeavors…my family owned a feed store. For those urbanites, a feed store is an agricultural general store, where farmers get seeds, ranchers get feed and pet owners get supplies.

 

My dad is and was a cunning small-town businessman. He bought an old semi-trailer, parked it next to the store, and kept some feed in there – an ingenious way to get some extra square footage. However, on this day, he had done something to this young 10 or 11 year old.

 

The nature of the feed business is that bags of feed will occasionally get busted. Often, you’ll find all different types of horse oats, cow pellets, etc. on the floor (I should know, my job at the family business was to sweep the floor every day.) On this day, my dad was at the back of the trailer, moving feed to recoup even more square footage. Whatever drew my ire caused me to pick up a huge horse oat – a solid mass of 2-inch-by-2-inch hardness. I wound up just like Nolan Ryan and fired the missile with as much gusto as a youngster could.

 

“Thud.”

 

A perfect throw, connecting with the left shoulder. A gold medal throw.

 

My dad, 6’1”, 300 lbs…spun around faster than I ever knew he could. For six hours, that was the last I would see of him.

 

You see, my second athletic of achievement was running straight home. I was a sort of latchkey kid…I always had the key to the house around my neck on a string. So I ran six blocks home, at breakneck speed. I went to my room, moved a chair in front of my door, hid in the closet, and probably prayed.

 

The interesting thing – my dad was already bright red when he turned around to engage in a fearsome punishment – was that my father didn’t chase me (or if he did, I was truly fast that day.) He also didn’t say a word about it six hours later when he came home. I even came him a courtesy hour, where I didn’t leave the closet in fear of accidentally opening the bedroom door to the sight of a man with a belt, a paddle and a plan.

 

I’m not sure why I never got punished. Maybe the hours of torturous waiting were punishment enough. Or maybe my dad admired my speed.