Return to Sawyerton Springs: A Mostly True Tale Filled with Love, Learning, and Laughter by Andy Andrews

Author:Andy Andrews [Andrews, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2009-08-31T20:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

“EVERYTHING OKAY AT SCHOOL TODAY?”

I was ten years old and in the fourth grade at Sawyerton Springs Elementary. Every day for four years, my father had asked the same question after school.

“Yessir,” I answered as I threw my books on the kitchen table and headed for the refrigerator.

“How’s Mrs. McLoyd?” he asked. He always asked that.

“Okay, I guess,” I said. I spotted Christmas cookies and brought them to the table.

“Is her hip still giving her problems?” he asked.

“Unh-unh-unh.”

I answered in “kidspeak,” a language known only to children and used specifically to denote a lack of interest in whatever an adult is talking about. Spoken in a hurried manner with varying tones “unh-unh-unh” means “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” my father asked. “Don’t you see her walking around? Does she limp?” I shrugged. “Honestly, son,” he continued, “I don’t know how you find your way home. You don’t pay attention to anything!”

He had a point there. I did occasionally walk past our house on my way home from school. It wasn’t that I didn’t pay attention—it was that my mind was on other things. I had an imagination that worked overtime.

I was not on the same wavelength as my father. Our thought processes did not coincide. He once looked at me after I had done something and asked, “If everybody jumped in the fire, would you jump in the fire too?”

I answered him with an “unh-unh-unh,” but I distinctly remember thinking that if everybody jumped in the fire, then, yes, I probably would jump in too. I didn’t say that, of course, because I knew that it was not the reply he was looking for.

Fathers say things that sound ridiculous to their children. Fathers are simply not aware that they are dealing with a totally different frame of reference. For instance, my dad used to say, “If you don’t straighten up this minute, I’m going to wear you out, and I don’t mean maybe.” I could never figure out who “maybe” was. Did my dad spank him sometimes too?

Another thing he’d say after most of his speeches was, “Do you hear me?” It was inconceivable to me that he could believe I might not be able to hear him. He was usually six inches from my face—I could not only hear him, I could smell him too.

Dad got up from the table. “Hurry and do your homework,” he said. “We leave for church in exactly one hour.”

As the minister’s child, I was at the church every time the doors opened. This was a Wednesday, which meant dinner at five o’clock in the fellowship hall, SonBeams for children under twelve at six, and prayer meeting at seven. And my parents had choir practice for an hour after that.

Usually during choir practice, I went home with the Perkinses to stay until my parents were through, but on this particular Wednesday night, things changed.

“Mrs. Perkins has a sinus infection,” Mom said as we drove to church. “And I can’t miss rehearsal tonight with the Christmas Cantata coming up.

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