Short family story

Mrs H was talking to her parents earlier, and was told a family story that she hadn’t heard before. She replied that they really ought to write these stories down, as otherwise they’ll fall out of family folklore. This reminded me of something (I thought was) funny that happened when I was young. Pull up a chair - here’s the three-minutes-remaining summary.

Picture the scene: a late afternoon in summer, at home during the holidays. In the front garden, a tree that was big enough to climb up. And, in the house, a family bathroom in the front corner of the house, with a lock operated by a key. Add the final ingredient: a slightly oblivious, head-in-the-clouds boy of about ten.

That boy, for reasons that have been lost to time, decided to lock the upstairs bathroom and then go outside and climb the tree. It also happened that he was on his own when this happened, and didn’t speak to anyone while en route.

Chilling out half way up the tree on a small tree-house-like platform, he watched with interest as his parents took the long ladder out of the garage and put it against the house. Then one of them started to climb the ladder. This was interesting enough that the boy climbed down to ask what was going on. Unsurprisingly, they thought the boy in question was unconscious on the bathroom floor, having been unable to find him anywhere else: sighs of relief all round.

The truth was that the boy was in the tree, and the boy was me. If this story has a moral, it is that it’s always worth telling people what you’re up to, and to not always expect the worst.

Photo by Nagesh Badu on Unsplash