We all make mistakes, although I know some folks who seem to think that is not true.
Some mistakes seem critical when they happen, but in the long run become the family joke, or at least a family story.
Every Sunday evening there is a TV show dedicated to making people laugh at other’s mistakes. It’s called America’s Funniest Home Videos. I honestly don’t think all those videos are funny. Some of them look like individuals actually got seriously injured, and that is not funny to me.
I have quite a few mishaps from my life, times when I did something I shouldn’t have done. Sometimes they were done by accident, and sometimes they were done intentionally without my realizing the impact it would have.
We don’t always share the stories of mistakes we’ve made. Some things were funny when they happened. Some weren’t funny until later. Some were never funny.
I’ve got a couple of stories to share today about mistakes I’ve made. The first one was funny when it happened. The second was not funny when it happened, and is not funny now, but there is a great lesson there.
The other day at home, I thought about making waffles, which reminded me of a funny story.
One day, about 10 years ago, we were having a yard sale and we brought out from the house a bunch of items found in closets and cabinets. Many of the items we hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
One of the items we put out for sale in our yard sale was an old waffle maker. We knew it was still in good condition, but we had replaced it with one we liked better. This old one had been in the cabinet for so many years, we wondered why we hadn’t already disposed of it.
I don’t remember what price we put on that waffle maker, but someone came along and was interested. She asked if it still worked. We assured her that it did. She bought it.
As we were helping her with all the items she purchased, she opened up the waffle maker to find a full waffle inside.
Boy! Was I embarrassed! Surprisingly, it was fully intact, had no bugs or mold on it. It had probably been in that waffle maker for five years.
It’s a mistake not to clean a waffle maker when you are done using it.
The second story is not a funny story. Not then, not now.
It happened to me when I was in the ninth grade. Our PE class was learning about anatomy and health. The PE teacher was Miss Purcell, the girls’ basketball coach.
A friend of mine, Connie, was in the class. That day we were having a test, and I hadn’t studied, so I knew I would not do well on the test. Connie said she had not studied either.
We sat next to each other. During the test, which was part multiple guess and part written answers, I could feel her face nearing mine. She was looking on my paper. I whispered to her that I did not know the answers.
The next day, Miss Purcell called both of us into her office. She had both of our papers on her desk, and accused both of us of cheating.
Connie had seen my answers and wrote word-for-word what I had written on a couple of answers. The answers were wrong, too, which enhanced Miss Purcell’s suspicion.
During this meeting, I thought Connie acted particularly guilty. She kept repeating that she had not cheated, in a somewhat squealy way. I also denied it, because I honestly had not cheated. I got my bad grade honestly.
I never turned Connie in for what she did. I never admitted that I knew Connie had looked my paper. At the end of the school term, my PE grade was good, but Miss Purcell gave me a C in conduct that term. My parents asked me why. I never told them.
I will never forget that day. I made a series of mistakes, starting with not studying. It was a mistake not to have better covered my paper when I knew someone was trying to look at it. It was a mistake not to tell my parents what happened. They deserved to know.
It was probably a mistake not to rat out my friend.
I had never encountered anything like that either before or after that incident, but honesty is the best policy, even when it hurts.
— Mi amor para todos,
Nancy
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“Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.”
— Galatians 6:1