Choices

Our neighbors across the street were ruled by an angry, often raging man. Theirs was a sad, neglected-looking house, as were the children of the family, Joanie, close in age to me, and two older brothers. On the occasions that Joanie came out to play with the neighborhood group, she was often invited by my mother to stay for lunch, or join in cookies and milk time. Though she was welcome in our home, I was expressly forbidden to enter hers. The idea held no particular appeal to me until her dog had a litter.

“Come see the puppies,” she invited. “You can help me name them”.

Not forgetting the law laid down by my parents, I demurred more than once, till she mentioned that the puppies were in the cellar, next to the boiler for warmth.

“Maybe your mother will let you take one”, was the final persuader. A quick rationalization by an eager youngster, “Cellar is not house”, and down the cellar steps we went.

We snuggled the puppies, romped with them on the cellar floor, held them in our laps, a thorough delight. I left with the hope of one day bringing a puppy home, but what I brought home instead was a head full of fleas.

My mother quickly banished me to the bathroom while she made a rapid trip to the drug store. For days she lathered a noxious liquid on my scalp and into my hair, and later, with tears creeping down her face through this repulsive task, she combed and squeezed, combed and squeezed. Watching the misery on her face was worse than any punishment she could devise. It was almost a week before she declared me free of vermin and sent me back to school to be further checked by the school nurse. Word got out and I had to suffer the taunts and jokes of my second grade classmates who had great fun at my expense.

Did I learn my lesson? Did I then always follow the dictates of my parents? Yes, and, no. A child’s world is filled with lists headed, “Thou Shalt Not”, yet every day offers exciting possibilities. My choices, therefore, were not “Should I” but “Shall I”? Most often I didn’t, but some adventures were irresistible. So, of course I climbed the sewer cones jutting up in the air awaiting the completion of the road that would cover them; of course, I scaled the neighbor’s apple tree often for the sheer pleasure of accomplishment and filched pears from another; of course I raced with my new bike along the narrow, make- shift roads bisecting the marshes, risking disaster if I should slip and crash down the slope to the creek below. Success was heady because of the danger.

It was hard to resist the pull of the forbidden, and I failed many times, enduring punishments that followed. I was determined to try too many things. But, in all the years of my youth and my failure as a most obedient child, I never again entered that neighbor’s cellar nor the house.

That lesson was too unpleasant to ignore!