A Lesson In Being Literal

Welcome to my Walk Down Memory Lane with Lynette Kraft and others who are participating today. Before I begin with this week’s memory I’d like to remind everyone of my Give Away this week.

A few days ago, Lynette posted pictures (see the last two) that reminded me of an incident that happened many years ago. The picture that jogged my memory was the one of her son, Harrison, standing in a hole in their yard. Unfortunately, we have no pictures to document my child-in-the-hole-in-the-backyard story.

One day when Pastor Dad and I had made a shopping trip to one of the big box stores to load up on pantry supplies we left our children at home under the care of our oldest, Karen. While we were unloading the supplies, Karen came running out the door to tell us that one of their friends, Annie, was stuck in the yard. Since we had all sorts of playground equipment adorning our yard we naturally thought that either her hand or a piece of clothing was caught in something. Consequently, Pastor Dad grabbed some soap to grease whatever was stuck.

When he exited the patio door to the backyard he could not see Annie. It turned out that Annie literally was stuck “in” the backyard. Upon careful inspection he could just barely see the top of her head sticking out of a hole that had been dug in the soft dirt of our garden plot.

Obviously, soap was not going to do the trick. Pastor Dad grabbed a shovel and the two of us made a quick assessment of the situation. The children, consisting of our Lulu and Princess, coupled with some of the six siblings who lived across the street, had dug a deep hole with some now-forgotten purpose in mind. Annie had fallen into the hole with her knees and arms compressed against her chest. And to top it all off, there was only about one hour of daylight remaining.

We quickly got to work shoveling dirt from the hole, but the more we dug the deeper Annie sunk and the tighter her appendages hugged her body. After a few attempts and several minutes of wasting precious daylight we decided to change our plan of attack.

Should we call the fire department? Folklore said they rescued cats out of trees. Should we call them to help get a stuck child out of a hole?

We decided that our best option was to use the remaining light to dig a parallel hole and connect the two. That way the hole would be wide enough for Annie to unfold without sinking deeper.

We set to work. Between the two of us we were able to dig that second hole fast enough and close enough to the first one without either dropping dirt on Annie or collapsing the thin wall between the two.

When the work was completed Annie slowly stood up. It took some time for the blood to return to all of her extremities. The sun was just retreating over the horizon.

After Annie went home all covered with dirt and we had returned all the tools to the shed, we questioned Lulu about this escapade. I’ve forgotten many of the things she told us. What does remain in my mind was what they used as their measuring sticks: Annie’s younger sister, Ariel, and Lulu’s younger sister, the Princess.

It turns out that we hadn’t told the children that they couldn’t dig deep holes in the gardens and we hadn’t told them that they couldn’t stick their younger siblings into holes. Needless to say, we put a stop to any more attempts to reach China – or whatever – via holes in our garden. And children were no longer to be used for measuring sticks unless feet were firmly planted on the ground and individuals were matching their height back-to-back.

Children can be so literal. Sometimes parents must be very specific in their instructions as a result. :)