Trouble

     Some people are born with a knack for avoiding trouble and some people are born with a knack for getting into trouble.  Unfortunately, I fall into the latter category.  When you are a kid there are two types of trouble.  The first is when you choose to take a calculated risk that you might be clever enough to get away with something or that the punishment, if you are caught, will be such that the crime was worth it.  The second type of trouble is when you never saw it coming and then BOOM! Life as you know it seems over and you have to pay penance or lay low for awhile.
     The first type of trouble is possible to avoid, depending on your temperament, or impossible to accomplish, depending on your parents.  Out of the five children in the Buffington Clan, I was not the one with the temperament to avoid trouble.  Fortunately, my parents, especially Mama, could read my mind, so I rarely thought it was possible to get away with something and the punishment was substantial enough to thwart a great majority of my mischief.    The problem was that my mind was, and is, always planning and scheming to build something, try something, or say something, all of which leads to unforeseen trouble.  One of my favorite activities was to confiscate leftover boards, bricks, and miscellaneous items to use for building forts, swings, tight ropes, and obstacle courses.  Mama categorized all of my building accomplishments as "contraptions."  The safety record for my contraptions only involved two accidents, both of which could have been avoided if the injured party had listened.  I warned them not to climb on it yet because it wasn't ready: I hadn't tested it yet.  As the oldest, I was concerned for the safety of family and friends, therefore all of my contraptions went through a rigorous testing procedure in which I climbed on top and jumped as hard as possible to see if it collapsed.  If it didn't collapse, I declared it safe. The earliest incident involved my friend Doug. I was one year older than Doug and I hadn't started kindergarten yet, so it is easy to see that my propensity for trouble began early.  It was a simple contraption leaning against the pole of the swing set.  He fell climbing on it and busted his lip; blood went everywhere.  Mama was babysitting that morning and did not appreciate my explanation of why it was not my fault.  The second safety incident involved my sister, Janet.  After my warning, she looked me straight in the eye and climbed on the newest contraption.  She fell, knocked out both front teeth, and had to wait about three years for her permanent teeth to come in.  That definitively ended my access to raw materials and decreased my enthusiasm for building.
     As I said earlier, I always wanted to try something different, like humming with my fingers in my ears, making the thickest sandwich possible, while mama was on the phone or chiseling the shape of a rifle in a piece of pine, (not good, pine splits).  Sometimes my curiosity and scientific inquiry called for testing a hypothesis. One evening I was cleaning the kitchen after dinner.  Unloading the dishwasher sounded like a straightforward task until I noticed that a serrated knife looked sort of like a drill bit.  Then, I started wondering if maybe this type of "drill" could make a hole in a piece of wood if it was held perpendicular to the wood and had a little pressure behind it.  The knives and a wooden drawer front were conveniently at hand.  In my mind I kept thinking this won't really work, so why not try it?  So, I carefully held the serrated knife at a right angle to the drawer front, leaned into it slightly, and rotated the knife clockwise.  Oops!  The result of my experiment was the neatest, cone-shaped hole in the drawer.  Of course, at that point, there was nothing to do but finish the kitchen, go to bed, and pretend I knew nothing about it.  I was so relieved to hear mama and daddy talking and discover there was such a creature as a carpenter beetle.  That poor insect took the blame for 40 years.
     As a child, I had a perfect talent for saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, or to the wrong people.  Getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing is not limited to children:  albeit, children do have a way of getting the most mileage out of misspoken words.  Daddy and I were in the backyard on a clear, fall day, assembling a new swing set.  I thought I was helping, but mostly I was hanging out and talking to Daddy.  I decided to ask a simple question that had puzzled me for a while.  I had observed that Daddy and Mama's mother were polite, but not friendly.  So, I asked, "Daddy, do you like Grandmama?" Daddy gave a witty, funny response that made me laugh, and then we went on working.
     I loved going to spend the night with Grandmama and Grandpa.  Grandmama made the best homemade pancakes the size of dinner plates and Grandpa took me fishing.  Grandmama and I would go shopping and come home with chocolate eclairs or a box of white-powered doughnuts.  Even so, the best part of the visit was just getting to talk.  Grandmama and I would chat about everything and she would tell me stories about when Mama was a little girl.  Mama and Daddy always warned me not to tell family business.  That was easy to do because I didn't know anything about money.  On this particular visit, we sat in the kitchen eating lunch and Grandmama asked one simple question, similar to the one I asked Daddy: "Your Daddy doesn't like your Grandma very much, does he?"   Suddenly, I remembered Daddy's witty reply and quickly answered with a chuckle, "He says that you're alright in your place, but they haven't dug it yet."  It is now clear to me that the reason Mama and Daddy can read my mind is that I inherited my predisposition for trouble.