When Kids Tell the Rest of the Story: Joust in Time

As my kids moved well into adulthood I began to wonder if we had reared Paul Harveys. As with most active kids, there were events that occurred in their lives that caused us to wonder how and if they would survive to become adults. Now they take delight in telling the rest of some of these stories.

Our home, when the boys were young, was a basic three bedroom ranch style with the kitchen and living room at one end and the bedrooms down a hall at the other end. I was in the bedroom at the end of the hall one day. I hadn't noticed that the door had been strategically left open for a week or two.

Turning around to leave the room a sheet of paper taped to the hall side of the opened door caught my attention. The paper had been colored solid with multiple layers of different crayon colors before it was taped to the door. Pulling the door away from wall revealed the reason for the paper.

This paper was a very lame attempt to conceal a hole though the door. To my question of what happened to the door came the boys’ favorite answer when they had been successful at concealing something for a time.

“It’s been that way for a really long time,” replied one of the younger boys. I countered this with as calm of a tone as I could muster while my anger meter was red-lining.

“I don’t care if it’s ancient history. It’s still not okay. Now somebody start talking.”

Again, one of the two youngest boys started singing. The oldest boy wouldn't say crap if he had a mouthful when confronted with his crime. Kevin, the youngest boy had been tormented by Don, the oldest, to a point well past sane or rational behavior. Seeing that he had pushed Kevin too far, Don took refuge in the bedroom and Kevin broke the door in an effort to get at his older brother.

Rational thought returned to both boys when they realized the damage to the bedroom door. Kevin was prepared to confess and take the rap but Don wasn't about to go down in a blaze of confessed glory. Deception was always his first choice in the wake of a crime.

It was his ridiculous idea that a sheet of typing paper could be colored with crayon to perfectly match the color and wood grain of the door and save him from suffering for his part in the door damage. Needless to say, the artwork wasn't even a very poor match. Of course, this is why the door was kept open. Being at the end of hall, we never walked by the door so that we might see it without walking into the room.

The rest of story Kevin told years later, as an adult. I assumed that a foot or fist had broken the door. It was just a basic builder’s grade laminate wood door. I put my foot through one once when I attempted to push it open with my foot because my hands were full.

In fact, Kevin was so enraged at his brother, who was more than five years senior, that he took down a steel pipe that I had stored, in the rafters, in the basement. The pipe was jousting length for a young boy and joust he did. He chased his brother with the pipe to the dead end of the bedroom at the end of the hall.

Realizing that Kevin was too enraged to stop, Don slammed the bedroom door shut just before Kevin impaled him. Unable to check his momentum, Kevin impaled the door instead.

Watch for the next story in the series of When Kids Tell the Rest of the Story: The Mark of Zorro.