WHY PARENTS TURN GRAY

by Eloise Barton

It's not what our kids do that turns us gray; it's what we did and got away with that makes us worry!

I was a good kid: got good grades; took part in the church youth group; sang in the church choir. But sometimes I got tired of always being such a Goody Two-Shoes, so one bright June morning, when my boyfriend suggested we both ought to play hooky at least once in our lives, I agreed.

I hid my schoolbooks behind the garage, met him around the corner from my house, and we took off for a ride on his motor-scooter for a ride through the Gold Rush country around Placerville.

The weather was hot, so we stopped by a shady creek to eat lunch. We saw a cave up the hill that looked intriguing, so we hid the motor-scooter in some bushes where no one could see it, then climbed up the hill to explore.

The cave turned out to be an old deserted mine. A short distance form the entrance, we found a ladder down to the main shaft. My boyfriend held the flashlight while I climbed down first. Then he tossed the light to me to hold while he followed.

Unfortunately, his greater weight caused the rotten wood of the old ladder to break, and he tumbled to the floor beside me. When I saw he wasn't hurt, I started to laugh.

The laughter stopped as I realized our predicament: Without the ladder, we couldn't get out. No one knew where we were, and with the motor-scooter hidden, no one would even know where to look for us. We could be trapped in here forever!

I wanted to scream; I wanted to cry; but greater than that was my need to appear calm, cheerful, and unafraid. Just because I was a girl didn't mean I was a wimp! I leaned against the cold dirt wall to try to stop my shaking. My boyfriend also tried to appear calm, but I noticed the flashlight wobbled as he searched through the tunnel for something we could climb on.

We finally stacked pieces of the broken ladder and other debris we found in the tunnel until we made a pile high enough so my boyfriend could reach the upper level. With me pushing on his feet, he dug his elbows into the dirt and dragged himself out. Then he laid flat on his belly, reached down to my outstretched arms, and pulled me up beside him.

Our desire to explore the old mine had completely ended. We hurried out into the welcoming sunshine, uncovered the motor-scooter, and headed for home. My boyfriend pushed his machine to top speed all the way.

Although we stopped to wash our hands and faces, the state of my clothes made it necessary for me to confess to my parents that I'd been playing hooky. However, I told them only that we'd been riding the motor-scooter over dirt road. I was in enough trouble without telling them what we'd really done!

Not until I was a parent of teenagers, and worried about what danger my kids might be getting into, did I tell them about the time I was almost buried alive. My parents didn't find out until they read an article I wrote about it!

So what did you get away with when you were a kid that your parents never found out about?

What kind of mischief did you get into that helped them on their way to gray?