Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN (04/13/17)
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TITLE: Napping...A Leading Cause of Accidents | Previous Challenge Entry
By Vicki Thomas
04/18/17 -
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Where is the fine line when mercy expires and discipline must take over? I’m not entirely sure I will ever fully know, but I have come to understand that God never fails in His attempts to teach me through the lives of my children. Take the incident of the four-year old, the turtle, and the unplanned nap...
The “Turtle Olympics”. This was a made-up game, concocted in the minds of my four boys, in which they would each take their four baby turtles outside and race them against each other in the “Turtle Olympics”. This activity included obstacle courses made from sticks, rocks, and pieces of cardboard, and culminated with laps for the turtles to swim in an ice cream tub container full of water in order to win the gold. The “Turtle Olympics” could go on for hours some afternoons and I couldn’t say that I ever really minded. It was great, cheap entertainment that kept four boys, under the age of eleven, outside and out of trouble -- at least until the accident occurred...
I stood at the kitchen sink, doing dishes, keeping an eye on the boys out the window. Suddenly, Noah, the youngest, stomped into the house. With one cavalier toss, he flung his tiny turtle – which was about the size of a fifty-cent piece -- onto the kitchen counter and stormed downstairs.
“Noah!” I called. “Come back up here and take care of this turtle!”
…Silence…
Feeling aggravated at being ignored, I dried my hands from the dishwater and picked up the turtle. That was when I noticed that he didn’t look so good. Turning him over, I quickly saw the blood pooling under his tender shell as his little legs hung limp.
“Noah,” I questioned as I reached the bottom of the stairs, “did you accidentally step on this baby turtle?” I desperately wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt…but it wasn’t going to work that way.
“No.” He answered back, flatly. You could see it on his face – ‘guess again’ his look seemed to say. I took another shot.
“Did you squeeze your turtle?”
“-Yeah, ‘cause he wouldn’t wake up.” …And there it was. The innocent confession of a four-year old, whose turtle had been punished for an inconvenient nap during the Olympics… I tried to impart the reality of the damage, explaining that he had really hurt the baby turtle and that it was certain to die.
“…I’m sorry,” came Noah’s sheepish reply. “I’ll be nice now.”
Unfortunately, it was a little too late for nice. The poor thing hung on for three days, while we did the best we could to make his last days comfortable. Nathan, seven now, offered to help Noah bury him in the official pet cemetery - otherwise known as the flowerbed outside the back door. It was already the final resting place of Andrew’s salamander, Nathan’s frog, and an assorted variety of Jacob’s fish. The homemade crosses, the only reminder of the pets that had once been. So, Nathan made the tiny cross, while Noah, fairly unconcerned with the travesty that had taken place, took a kitchen spoon and dug a large hole in the flowerbed. Jacob, the oldest, angry at the injustice done to the defenseless creature, and at me for failing to discipline Noah sufficiently, shook his head and shouted, “How can you live with yourself, Noah?! …How can you live with yourself?!” …and refused to attend the funeral.
Andrew, the second oldest, looked on with solemn resolve, now left in charge of the funeral affairs. He had Nathan place the little stiff turtle into the hole and Noah covered him up. I made one last, futile attempt to prick Noah's tiny conscience.
“Noah, I’m sure it was just an accident, so can you say something nice about the turtle since you were the one who hurt him?”
He looked lovingly down at the little mound of dirt.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be nice now...”
And that was pretty much the end of his limited scope of remorse. He ran back into the house, grabbed his bag of M & M’s, and life continued on for him as usual. …There is just something about ignorance and innocence that causes discipline to be postponed and mercy to flow, at least for a little while…because sometimes during a nap, accidents will happen.
Non-fiction
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