The Christmas I Almost Died
I’ve almost died several times in my life.
There was that time I fell off our roof when I was five. My brother convinced me that if I tied a bed sheet around my neck and jumped off the roof, it would act as a parachute.
He was wrong.
Or the time I swallowed not one but two live goldfish. I was trying to get the attention of my group at church.
Swallowing one golffish is okay. Two? Not so much.
But the real time I almost died- I mean escaped by a thread- was Christmas 1969. I was seven years old.
We would always visit my dad’s parents in Whigham during the holidays. It was one of the few times that all of the aunts, uncles and cousins would all get together for a big meal and to open presents.
When all us kids got together, trouble was not too far behind. Especially if it was me, my brother and one of my cousins.
But this particular day? Well, we went a little too far.
My grandparents lived in this big old white house in Whigham. Across the street was several hundred acres of woods.
And that is where we got in the most trouble. In the woods.
While our parents were sitting around talking and getting lunch ready, the three of us went exploring.
We told them we’d be back before lunch and into the woods we went.
My bother, cousin and I had done some pretty stupid things over the years. We had grown a crop of wild ‘rabbit tobacco’, dried it over a fire and tried to smoke it.
It was horrid.
And we had built a homemade go cart from parts and pieces we found at the junkyard. The thing had a tendency to overheat and catch on fire but that didn’t stop us from driving it all over the woods.
But that was nothing like the stunt we pulled during the Christmas of 1969.
I don’t know whose idea it was but that person almost got us killed.
We’re walking along in the woods, looking for something to vandalize, when somebody spotted a bush that was covered with these plump, purple berries.
We were country kids and knew that these berries were poisonous. So we didn’t eat them. No, what we did would have been a lot less painful.
One is us knuckleheads had the bright idea that we could use these berries to play a joke on our parents.
If any of us had any sense, we would have shut it down right there. But we were little kids and common sense was still quite a few years into the future.
“We can smear them all over Jeff and tell our parents he has been in an accident. It will be hilarious.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because you’re the baby.”
I was seven. Not a baby but I didn’t argue. Maybe the one who was ‘dying’ would be treated with a little more compassion than the two perpetrators.
Wrong again.
I don’t know which one of us bozos thought this would be a fun thing to do but it was decided that my brother and cousin would smear the red juice from these berries all over me. And then they would run into the house screaming that I had been run over by a car.
Now, if one of us idiots had stopped right there- just one of us- and said, “This is a bad idea!” we would have avoided what was about to come.
But nope. We were nitwits.
So, my brother and cousin grabbed a big handful of those purple berries and began rubbing them all over me. On my face, my arms, in my hair, all over my clothes.
When they were finished, I looked like that scene in the movie, ‘Carrie’ where they dumped a bucket of blood all over Sissy Spacek.
We practiced what we were going to do. My brother and cousin would run into the living and scream that I had been run over my a car. That was my cue to come through the door- actually I was going to crawl, dragging my two broken leg behind me.
It was going to be hilarious. Our parents, however, had a different opinion.
Satisfied that I was sufficiently covered with the fake blood, we headed back to my grandparents house.
As we stood in front of the house, preparing to launch our prank, I had a quick idea flash across my dumb mind.
‘You about to make a huge mistake,’ my mind said. Foolishly, I ignored that little voice.
But I didn’t have the luxury of telling my brother and cousin about my hesitation. They ran forward, across the porch and burst through the front door.
They had both somehow been able to muster up some tears as they proclaimed to all my relatives that little brother had been run over by a car.
That was my cue.
I threw myself down on the porch and then crawled through the door, moaning and writhing in pain.
My performance was Oscar-worthy. My parents were obviously not members of the Academy because they didn’t burst into applause at my performance.
Upon seeing my bloody body, smeared head to toe with berry juice, my mother let out a shriek that I am sure probably contributed to my grandmother’s early death a couple years later.
She jumped up, grabbed me and yelled for my father to go get the car so we could go to the hospital. My dad sprang from his rocking chair and began to run towards the the door.
That was the moment that my brother and cousin burst out laughing.
My mom, a little perplexed at their inappropriate behavior, reached down and wiped a finger across the blood splattered on my face.
At this point, I should have been smart enough to admit that this was all a hoax. I was okay.
But I was young and quite stupid, so instead, I screamed as if she was poking her finger down into a bullet wound.
A good actor never breaks character.
My mother raised her finger to her nose and I saw her face change from a concerned mother to the furious, potential murderous levitation she was about to become.
Realizing that this was not blood smeared all me, she dropped me
back to the floor with a thud and turned to my father.
She didn’t have to say a word.
My father grabbed me and my brother by our necks and dragged us onto the porch. The next sound I heard was his leather belt being whipped through his belt loops.
As he laid into me, my mother came flying through the door She was as mad as a three-legged dog trying to bury a turd on an icy pond.
Somehow, while screaming statements such as “I’m going to beat you to death” and “stand still so I can hit you”, my mother managed to pull a long wooden spoon out of her purse.
That was her weapon of choice. A good stiff spoon.
My dad continued applying a few stipes to my little behind while my mom attempted to kill my brother with that spoon. After a few minutes, they switched off.
My brother got the belt and I got the spoon.
And in between the crying and screaming for mercy, we heard our uncle whipping our cousin in the living room
Unlike my parents, he obviously didn’t care if other people watched him deliver a little discipline to my cousin’s rear end.
Mercifully, the beatings ended with the warning from my mother that if we ever tried something like that again, she would beat us to death.
I do believe she meant it.
But what I remember most about this whole situation was how we seemed so unfazed by it.
We took our lickings, dried our tears and went on playing. Well, after I went to the bathroom and scrubbed all the ‘blood’ off of me.
We didn’t call DEFACS or our attorney. We didn’t go online and spend the next week complaining about how our parents were sadistic monsters.
We didn’t ask to be emancipated.
Nope, we cleaned ourselves up and headed back to the woods.
And we never pulled a stunt like that again. My mother’s wooden spoon guaranteed that!
Child psychologists claim that spanking a child normalizes the act of hitting someone and any parents who still do it should be sent to a maximum security prison to spend the remainder of their lives in solitary confinement.
These are the same people who used to claim that New York City would be underwater by 1990.
I don’t know about all that but I do know one thing. I will NEVER try to prank my mother by smearing berry juice all of me.
I learned my lesson and I can honestly say that I will never do that again.
But if I do, my mom is ready. She’s 88 years old and still has that wooden spoon in her purse.
And she is not afraid to use it on me.
