average life

I thought that I would arrive early for my Dad’s retirement party, but by the time I pulled into the gravel driveway, there was scarcely any room left to park. I pulled my car behind my parent’s SUV and immediately regretted being late.

I had thrown on a thin sport coat before leaving Atlanta to keep me warm for the drive home. It was the kind of coat that cool people wore six months earlier over ironic t-shirts that urged passers-by not to read them. I had planned taking it off before I went into the house, but soon forgot about it until I saw my entire family waiting on the front lawn. When I got out of the car, I felt silly wearing such an urban accessory in such an un-urban setting; my parents lived an hour and a half from the nearest interstate.

Silently forgiving the jacket, there were hugs from all my brothers and sisters that had already arrived. Nieces and nephews ran around the yard kicking a new soccer ball. A couple of them stopped to say hello while their playmates waited impatiently for them to rejoin the game. Soccer could not wait for uncles in ridiculous jackets, after all.

When the last sister arrived (carrying the opposing soccer team with them), the adults moved inside and commenced swapping stories and insisting certain nieces and nephews had grown six inches since the last time they were seen. As it always did, the family ended up scattered about the living room. Some were seated on couches, others on the floor, while still others paced around and urged their legs to unstiffen from the long drive.

Families tell the same stories over and over. This is not new. The interesting thing with large families is that individual members have certain stories affixed to them. All stories can’t be remembered, so only two or three is retold per family member at every occasion. I have two.

Sure enough, we begin telling stories and as the focus of the laughter fell upon me, the first story was told. Barely able to speak because of laughter my sister, Tracy, gives the set up, “Or the time Clint passed out while surveying!”

Everyone knew the story, so it wasn’t necessary to tell it in its entirety, but its mention alone was enough to cause chuckles throughout the present family members. A couple of questions were asked by some as they tried to decide who all was present at the time that I fainted while holding a surveyor’s rod only to be revived by and elderly lady in a house-coat. It was decided that while Sharon and Leith were working on that job, only Dad and Tracy were actual witnesses to the event.

Half the family had moved on to something else, when Tracy started my second story, “Or the time Clint got lost in the woods!” I froze, but my eyes looked around, waiting for everyone to latch on this family joke, but no one seemed to have heard her. Was it possible? Was I going to escape? The room was now divided in its stories, half discussing one while the other half debated another. Tracy’s contribution had gotten lost as each family member was preoccupied trying to decide which conversation to join in. I exhaled, relieved. Normally when this, my second story, was offered as a topic of family reminiscing, I simply smiled, nodded, and tried to change the subject. I had been doing it for years and was good at it. The reason for my reluctance was simple.

I never actually got lost in the woods.

When I was young, my cousin and I decided to walk through the woods to my grandmother’s house. It was less than a mile and my Mom said she didn’t mind as long as we called as soon as we got there. We set off, but soon realized I weren’t quite sure in which direction to continue. I had been a Cub Scout and my survival training (which consisted of making maracas out of paper maché and broken lightbulbs) told me to listen for the traffic on the road. If we found the road, we could simply follow it to my grandmother’s house. The plan worked and, sidetracked only by the skeletons of a snake and cat locked in an epic battle, we soon found ourselves walking up to her front porch. We knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. Her car wasn’t there and we realized that neither was she.

It seemed cruel to waste the trip without any summer fun being had, so my cousin suggested we go down to the creek looking for arrowheads. I thought it was a great way to salvage the trip, so we set out for the creek which was in the opposite direction of home.

We tried looking for arrowheads, but the creek washed away those that weren’t picked clean by hunters such as ourselves. Ramming sticks down crawdad holes was a close second and we were completely unaware of how much time had passed before we heard voices calling. We crawled from the creek bed to see my Mom and several brothers and sisters scattered throughout the pasture, hands cupped to their lips as they called our names.

We walked over to them. Mom seemed relieved and my brother expressed disbelieve in the fact that we had completely overshot my grandmother’s house and emerged from the woods at the creek. Fearing punishment for not calling we jumped at this offered explanation and we all climbed into the back of the pickup truck to return home. As we passed my grandmother’s, we saw her small hatchback parked in the driveway. We probably hadn’t missed her by much.

That’s how the lie began. I got up and got a glass of water. I didn’t really feel guilty for lying all those years, it was just a stupid thing kids do and it gave people a funny story to tell. In the other room, laughter erupted as some other family member’s first or second story was remembered. I marked my name on my plastic cup with a Sharpie marker in order to find it again amongst all the others. Upstairs the nieces and nephews screamed and jumped on beds while they could before an adult came and scolded them. It wasn’t going to be me. I let the kids jump on the bed and returned to the laughter in the living room, sitting by a brother-in-law whose legs had finally unstiffened from the long drive home.