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Title one of my foulest deeds

When
I see my reflection in the mirror all I see is the sparkle in my eye
and the worry wrinkles on my forehead. I guess it has always been
that mischievous sparkle in my eye that has led me to do all the
mischievousness in my life. The wrinkles are there because of the
worry I put myself through after I have committed my dastardly
deeds.

One
of the earliest dastardly deeds that I can remember revolves around
my older brother Barrie. I will devote a whole chapter to my brother
Barrie a little later on in this book.

It
was about 1950 in Manning, Alberta. My mom and dad and six siblings
were living up above the butcher shop that my dad ran. I was six
years old at the time, mom and dad in one bedroom, myself and my
three older brothers in two sets of Army bunks in another room, and
my two sisters in the last bedroom.

Now
my brother Barrie, who was seven years older than I, had a long
serious history of bladder problems. He had ,on more than one
occasion , spent months at a time out in the hospital in Edmonton
being treated. A big expense for a dad trying to squeak out a living
on a quarter section homestead with seven hungry kids to feed. That's how we ended up in Manning in 1950, Dad running the butcher
shop for the owner, George Grimm.

It
was at least -40°F outside and we had no indoor bathroom and I had
to pee. I was already in bed. That meant I would have to get up and
go out on the open air back stair landing and use the just emptied
slop pail. Maybe there was a chamber pail in the girls bedroom.  Whatever the background behind my reasoning, I decided it would be
easier just to crawl down into Barrie's bunk and pee there. With his
bladder problems, he always peed the bed at night anyway so his bunk
had a rubber sheet on it. I figured he wouldn't notice the
difference. So that is what I did. Later, when Barrie came to bed,
he threw back the blankets to get in and noticed his wet sheet. He
was a lot sharper than I gave him credit for. He called out,"
Mom my bed is wet!"

Mom
came in and sized up the situation, and figured out what had
happened. I can still remember her wacking me through the blankets
and me pressing against the wall trying to avoid her spanks. She
wasn't very tall so she couldn't reach all the way to the back of my
bunk.

I
wrote about this dastardly deed once before, it was for mom and dad's
60th anniversary. The girls had decided that we should all write
down some of our memories about growing up in our family so I wrote
about it then. During that afternoon celebration, Jackie Dzaman,
Cecil's old pal, was reading from the book of memories that was
laying on the display table. When he finished reading my little
contribution, he just looked over at me and shook his head. He said
to his wife Gail standing beside him," See Gail, we don't have
to worry about our kids, look how Robert has turned out, he's a
schoolteacher now, and he was the worst little bugger in the world." We had a good laugh together.

If you like this story and want to check out other ones I have written just go to my website  https://robertmcclarty.selz.co...