Blogging For Books: Cheating

Joshilyn Jackson, who is SO very PRETTY AND NICE and writes one of the funniest blogs EVER (and whose latest book, Between, Georgia is out NOT SOON ENOUGH aka July), is the Hostess for Blogging For Books.

This Month's Topic, from her site: "...blog about cheating. Any old kind of cheating will do. Games, Lovers, Tests, it's all fair game until you admit in writing that you've cheated on the ever-faithful IRS...."

Don't Cheat on Me Under the Ear Pod Tree

I don’t cheat—on my husband, on tests, at games. Ok, so sometimes I sneak a peak at an answer for the TV Guide crossword puzzle. And God knows that I’ve strayed from my diet more than once (“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned with Krispy Kreme”). Well, there was that one time I cheated on a Summer AP English assignment, but I got busted, freaked out and cried, and was forgiven. But the only person I’ve cheated was Death, and that was as a mere preschool-aged mortal. I wish I could say I was a precocious Buffy wannabe, but really, it was dumb luck. Or my guardian angel (though I’ll save her for another time).

I grew up in 70’s suburbia, down to the avocado-green swing set in the backyard. But what I didn’t have was a sandbox, and since I had a baby sister (who slept in MY. ROOM.) I think my parents thought that a sandbox would keep me out of my mom’s hair. My dad decided that the best location, since we lived in sunny Florida, would be under a shade-giving Ear Tree. I have no idea what its real name is; we just called it that for the black seed pods that looked like ears.

He sank the beams for the sides into the ground so the tree would be the centerpiece. Only problem is, when he put those beams down, he cut into the root system of this huge tree. All the way around the root system. Nonetheless, for some time, I enjoyed playing in my homemade sandbox while my mom would watch from the kitchen. The yard was fenced, the gates latched, and those were different times when you could actually leave a little kid outside to play. Nobody knew there was a countdown for disaster right there in the yard.

One sunny day, I was in that very sandbox, building who knows what. It was breezy, but not so blustery as to prevent me from my play. My mom has told me—more than once—that she was watching me while she washed dishes and gave my sister lunch in her high chair. It’s true what they say, that things happen in the blink of an eye. One minute, my mom’s watching me play beside the giant trunk in the sand. She turned, but only for a minute, when she heard a thunderous crack and a sickening, ground-shaking thud.

As a mother myself, I can only imagine how the next few minutes must have played out for her. She jerked back to the window to see the giant tree felled, the trunk splintered and smashed across the side of the sandbox, branches splayed across the backyard, black pods flung everywhere. And I was nowhere to be seen.

When she found me, safely on the other side of what remained of the trunk, out of sight, with not a scratch on me, she went to pieces. I hear it took my dad, grandpa and grandma quite some time to calm her down after such a fright. Me, I didn’t even cry. I didn’t even act scared, she tells me. I never gave the slightest indication it had even bothered me, until one blustery day I told her that trees fell down when the wind blew. By then, she’d regained composure about the subject, and told me that was nonsense.

And darnit if Death wasn’t ticked about losing me the first time, threw a hissy fit, and knocked down a tree right outside my bedroom window.