'A TEACHABLE MOMENT'

This past Friday night/Saturday morning, I got one of those middle-of-the-night, wake-me-up-from-a sound-sleep telephone calls from my youngest daughter who, along with her best friend, were supposed to have been home half an hour earlier. Her little red convertible was in a ditch. Would I please come pull her out? And wouldn’t you know it? Sweetness almost dripped through the telephone receiver. “Yes, Honey, I’ll be there in a li’l bit,” was my sleepy reply. Without another word or grumble, I got up, got dressed, trudged through the mud to the barn to get a chain off of the tractor, and then headed her way in my old truck.

As I pulled up, I was relieved to see that there was no damage to either the little car or my girls, with them bein’ the most important. Comin’ out of the curve, they had slid off the road, just bottomin’ out the car frame on the edge of the ditch bank. Within a couple of minutes, I had ‘em back on the road and headed home, albeit a bit slower, now.

           Once home, as I was laughin’ and pickin’ on ‘em about their ‘accident’, it was easy to see that both girls were somewhat surprised that I wasn’t mad and scolding them like most parents would have been doin’. I explained to ‘em that I had ‘been there, done that’; that I well remember the times (yes, plural) when I had done the same exact thing at their age. Only, I hadn’t felt comfortable enough to call my Daddy, who would’ve come down on me swift and hard, so I’d had farmers pull me out with their tractors each time, instead. Now, I look at things a bit different than most folks. I got enough sense to realize that if you drive much at all, you WILL end up in a ditch at some point in time, especially if you drive at night in the rain. That just happens. It was an accident, plain and simple. I’m just glad that no one was hurt and her little car wasn’t damaged.

          Before we all turned in, I asked if they had learned anything from this, as ‘good judgment comes mostly from bad experiences’. Nicole quickly replied, “Yeah, not to go through that curve so fast”, which promptly got her a sharp sideways look from her ol’ Daddy-O. Her next response was the one I was really wantin’ to hear… that ‘no good EVER comes from bein’ out past midnight’. She and I had just talked about that earlier in the week. Both girls assured me that they would be home BEFORE twelve o’clock from now on.

As I lay down in bed once more, I offered up thanks to the Good Lord for takin’ good care of my girls and for givin’ me the wisdom to handle the situation in a way to make the best impression on two wonderful and very impressionable young ladies.

I also gave thought to a dear friend and mentor, who, back about a quarter of a century ago, used to deal with a once wild and reckless teenage boy in much the same manner. See, Uncle Ruffin? I was listenin’.  J