When I was seven, two years after we moved into our house, I was helping my brother build a deer blind. It was big enough for two, and we were going to go hunting opening day. Our brand new lawnmower was in the garage where we worked. I was sitting on the seat admiring the cool stuff with my small eyes.

My brother was inside of the half done deer blind, he threw some nails to me, and I caught them. They were the type of nails that were connected, and you had to cut them apart to use them. I thought to myself, “This shouldn’t be that hard to do.”

As I was cutting them up on the seat of the lawnmower, I realized that I was cutting up the new leather seat, so I immediately stopped cutting the nails. At this point I knew I was in trouble. I remember my face turning red as a cherry. I was terrified. I had ruined something so new and unused. But who am I to know that I shouldn’t have been cutting the nails on the seat? I was only seven.

Later when my parents returned home from work at about 4:00, I tried not to look them straight in the eyes, for I thought they might see right through me and know I did something wrong. I didn’t know how to tell them. They might send me to my room or ground me.

I finally decided to tell them. As I was walking down to the living room to sit and talk with them, my dad came in from the garage. My stomach dropped, and I was tremblingly with fear. My dad walked into the room and didn’t say a word. Had he noticed the slices of black leather in the seat? Am I off the hook? I asked myself that question over and over again. Out of nowhere, finally my dad called a “family meeting.”

My brother and sister stopped what they were doing and ran to the living room where my mom, dad, and I were all sitting. I wondered if maybe my brother would possibly take the blame for me, but he had never done that before.

So as my family was all sitting on our couch, my dad said, “Alright who did it?” I was tense, and right when I was about to tell my dad that it was me that had cut the seat he told us all to go to our room, where we would sit until one of us came down to confess.



We had gone through this same thing before. But all the other times, it was my brother or sister who did something wrong. My brother knew that it was me who put gashes in the seat. My brother wanted me to confess. That’s why he didn’t tell on me.

Finally, after a half hour went by, I decided to go downstairs and find my mom, hoping that if I told her she would give me an easier punishment than my dad would. My dad always seems to give harsher punishments than my mom.
So as I approached the office where my mom was on the computer, I said, “Mom, it was me who put the holes in the seat. It was just an accident. I had no idea that it would cut through.” Immediately my mom called my brother and dad into the room. She told my dad that my brother allowed me to have a knife.
My dad was furious with my brother. After all I was only seven. I shouldn’t have had a knife anyways. So both my brother and I had to go to our rooms and “think about what we had done” So after an hour went by I told myself “ive thought of it enough.” and I went downstairs.
My mom was cooking dinner, I remember it was chicken, mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli and cauliflower. I told my mom that I was terribly sorry for what I’d done. She said that she forgave me and to tell my dad that I was sorry also. So I ran to my dad in the garage where he was working on the deer blind. I said, “Sorry for gashing holes into the seat. He told me that it would be ok, and we could get a new seat.