I am reminded of an incident that happened in my teen days. I had this cycle, American Eagle! It was my prized possession through my schooling days and was my confidant and friend. Well, naturally I gave it the nick, “Elvis”, apparently… I worshipped him, you see! My bicycling skills were legendary in our street. When it’s time to apply the brake I usually hit the peddle and naturally there were victims, Mr. Bradley who was mowing his lawn, my cousins who rode along with me, the lamp post, drain pit, etc. “Elvis” had the tendency to break down very often… The main ailment was the weak spokes; it’s like a pack of cards… One falls, the others fall around it. The spokes cost me $2. Big bucks for an eleven-year-old! Twice or thrice I was reprimanded by my dad for my carelessness. Of course, my gorgeous grandma would bail me out those times. As it happens, always, it broke down again, I didn’t dare tell my old man, so I just carried on with the broken spoke; heard a pop on the way; and ended up with two broken spokes. Disaster! I calculated with all my fingers to arrive at $5 to be the expense. Hmm… Went home, didn’t know what to do, and at night I plotted that terrible plan. The piggy bank that my mom exclusively kept for rainy days was my target. I did the unthinkable, I used a sewing needle to poke and extract $5 Bill folded n number of times and hid it safe in my backpack in the middle of my favorite picture book and went to sleep. The next day, I started early and moved to the repair shop… It was closed. It had to be! You see everything was going wrong. I had to wait watching my back around, you know, I stole money and I was sweating… Scared, and then the grumpy fellow came to fix the problem. I asked him how much would it cost… He said $5. Of course, I kept asking him if he was sure it’s gonna cost $5 all through his repairing ordeal getting him as frustrated as I could.

When he was through, I instantly took the Bill from the book, handed it, and fled errr… I felt the hand on my shoulder and in his hand was this $5 Bill unfolded with a big hole in the middle. Armageddon! I started sweating like a pig, shirt sticking to my back, and he was good with words, I mean the expletives, well, I am his first trade and I pulled out something like this! I pawned my Math book, and went to school, somehow sat through the school hours and ran home. I needed $5 now to get the book back. I usually hit the sack around 9 o’ clock those days, but this time, I wasn’t able to, kept tossing and turning, but the sleep eluded me… I felt myself standing up, walking and knocking my folks room and when my mom opened the door, I directly went to their bed, snuggled in and broke down, started crying like hell, and when my dad asked me what has transpired, I cried even louder. They left me cry to my fill and then got the story out of me. My dad said, “I’m proud of you Bob, you know, that you came clean, it’s alright, just concentrate on your studies, now go Bobby boy hit the bed.” I could see they were smiling. I didn’t know why. I slept the next minute I hit my bed.

If seen from a third-person perspective, it would seem funny, but for me, it ironed a flaw I was practicing!

I would love to hear what you thought of it and feel free to share your experiences with confession and the aftermath.