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Life Lessons (My Chapel)*not grammatically correct yet

Today, I would like to talk to you about some of the lessons I have learned in my life. As you constantly hear me say, I wasn’t the best child. That doesn’t mean that I am not smart or that I didn’t learn anything. I learned a lot because I had a lot of experiences. Please remember as I go through that, although I may have thought so from time to time in my life, my mom is not the devil. I just think that I may have been that bad. I deserved most of what I got, but I also know that my parents did what they did because they love me. So if it sounds like I was unmercifully punished, I did my best to make sure that I earned it all. Also, I grew up when getting whipped and spanked was acceptable. I don’t regret it. I think that I needed it sometimes.

For as long as I can remember, I have been hyper and in trouble. I don’t’ know if it is just part of my nature or what, but I do know that. And my relatives had their own ideas on how to help my parents discipline me. One of my great aunts would bring my mom a bundle of switches once a month – since you probably don’t know, switches are thin willow branches which are very flexible and they sting when they hit you. They sting a lot. So once a month, my mother’s dwindling supply of switches would be replenished - fresh bundle for my backside. I tried to make sure that my mom used them all each month. I had to do my part to eliminate some of the garbage that would accumulate around the house. I don’t remember exactly what I did every time to get hit with the switch, but I do know that whatever it was, I stopped doing it. And we had one of my dad’s old belts hanging from a hook in the kitchen. It was on the wall for all to see, sort of a reminder of punishment, a kind of deterrent in the middle of dinner. It was easy to reach, easy to hold, and easy to swing. Most of the time, the belt was dad’s thing. Mom liked the switches I think because they hurt more. But if she was out of switches she could grab the belt too. One time, I remember thinking if I run, I won’t get whipped. I don’t know exactly what I did, but I could guess – it’s not really the point here. I had done something and I was in for it. I stood there for a second and then I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t think my mom would chase me. I ran into the backyard to escape over the fence. My mom in pursuit, I jumped for the fence. I had both hands on the top and had pulled one leg up. The other leg dangled there, helping me keep my balance. The sound of the switch moving rapidly through the air was like the crack of a whip or that noise when you swing something around really fast. The air being broken, subconsciously, I heard it. I froze there half on the fence and half off. Then it happened. I heard the pop on the back of my leg. It didn’t hurt right away. It was more of a "Hey, what’s that?" kind of thing. But then the pain quickly started, and I came flopping off the fence grabbing the back of my leg. She was in full rage now. Amid the other mutterings an angry parent makes, I could hear, "Now you are going to get two whippings. One for what you did and one for running from it." That was a valuable lesson for me. Face the music. Take your punishment because if you try to escape from it, you will pay twice as much when you get caught. It is really easier to deal with it the first time around.

Now if I had done something really bad (I don’t know exactly where the line was from bad to misbehaving to really bad, but here I mean really bad, ok?) my mom would just send me to my room. "Stephen Peter Mitchell, go to your room. Just wait until your father gets home." Whatever punishment I had coming, I was going to have to wait for. In the time I had to wait, I would create in my mind the most awful punishment imaginable. All day, I would sit and think about what I had done and what was going to happen to me. That was the worst. What was going to happen to me? Was I going to survive another onslaught with the belt? As soon as my dad came home, my mom would whisk him aside and tell him what I had done and that I was lucky she hadn’t just killed me then and there herself. He would calm her down and grab the belt. Always, he would knock on the door before he entered. I think that was just so he could make a dramatic entrance. Then he would ask me what happened. Pay attention here. During all my blubbering and stammering, I realized something. He already knew the answer. And he knew if I was telling the truth. When someone asks you a question, many times they already know the answer or close enough to know if you are lying. If your answer isn’t close enough to the truth, well, whoops. If my answer wasn’t what my mom had said happened, it was just worse for me. That’s the lesson. Tell the truth. Most people older than you already know what happened. They are asking you to see how honest you are. Be honest.

One of the most important lessons I learned didn’t really occur to me until long after it occurred. It’s importance was lost on me at the time. I was dating this girl, and we had broken up for some reason. For several months after this, she thought it would be funny to call me up all the time and hang up when I answered the phone. Real funny. On one occasion, the phone rang and I jumped up to answer it. I said, "Hello?" because that is how I answer the phone. Hello? I only heard the click of the person on the other end hanging up on me. Hmmm. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. I grabbed it and said, "Hello?" Click. Whoever it was hung up again. I was getting a little frustrated now. The phone rang again. Hello? Nothing. Hello? Click. Now I was really mad. Third time in a row. I knew it was the same person. It rang again. No way I thought. I am going to get this person back by not answering. But the phone kept ringing. Four times. Five times. I had an idea. I was going to get this person back. I was going to answer and give this person a piece of my mind. I wasn’t even going to give them the pleasure of hearing me say hello. I just grabbed the phone and shouted, "What do you want? Stop calling here. Who do you think you are?" and all kinds of other rude and obnoxious things. When I finally stopped screaming, my dad, slightly taken aback, said, "Is that how you answer the phone now?" It took me a minute to explain what happened. He knew I couldn’t have known it was him (we didn’t have caller ID). But the lesson here is be nice. Be kind. You never know who you are really talking to.

When I was 7, I thought that fire and matches were pretty neat. I guess sometimes I still do. I just loved fireworks. I had a plan on how to have my own indoor fire show - a live action kind of dramatic scene where I started and ended a fire raging almost out of control. I chose my performance time wisely. My parents had gone out for the evening and my brother and I had a new babysitter. Ideal situation. My brother and I were playing video games in the back of the house while the babysitter watched TV in another room. During my brother’s turn, I decided it was show time. I filled up a garbage can with Kleenex. It just seemed like it would make good kindling, and there was already some in the garbage. No one would notice. I pulled the Kleenex from the box one by one until the small, metal, oval can was filled to the top. When I dropped the match in, I didn’t realize that the Kleenex in the bottom were drenched with my mom’s nail polish remover. And I didn’t realize how fast the fire would grow. It seemed like it was much bigger than I was, and it wasn’t going out. The smoke alarm went off and the new babysitter came rushing in. She had no idea how to deal with a 7 year old pyromaniac or a fire raging out of control in a house. I just stood and gazed intently into the fire in my parent’s room. She grabbed a towel to smother the fire – to deprive it of necessary oxygen. The towel caught fire and the carpet began to melt. Eventually the fire went out. Maybe she threw water on it or maybe she brought it outside. I don’t remember. But it was cool. I just know I got in trouble. The lesson here I learned here is that there are some things that are more powerful than we are. We are not meant to understand or control them. Just know that they exist. And deal with it.

I had a babysitter until I was almost 13 years old. And as you can tell, it was probably with good reason. Except once when I was 11, despite all the things I had done, my mom thought she could trust me and my brother and some friends at home while she went out for a few hours. HA! What started off as a good idea turned into a bizarre surreal experience, similar to a Salvador Dali painting in my mother’s kitchen. I had this great idea to make a really large candle. I always liked fire, so this would be a great way for me to creatively and safely work with it. I went into the closet in the den where all the candles are kept. I took all the ones that I thought we didn’t use very frequently and brought them outside. I brought one of mom’s big pots and a new kitchen knife. The plan was to shave them into small pieces and melt the wax in the pot on the stove to make a large round candle. After a few minutes of shaving, I was bored. I am too hyper to sit there and shave the candles for that long. So I just started chopping them into relatively small pieces and throwing them in. The pot was about three quarters full when we brought it inside. There were 4 of us. We turned on the electric stove and stirred the mixture as the heat began to melt the wax. In just a short time, the whole pot was a congealed mess. The candles were all different colors, and the idea for a beautiful large round candle kind of disappeared in an ugly brown ball of melted wax, which was kind of neat in its own way. We decided to turn the heat up a notch to make the melting more complete. As the stove heated the wax, a small flame began to make its presence known on top of the wax. Not having the intelligence or life experience to know how to control or handle a grease fire which is what wax is basically, we decided to use water to put the fire out. For those of you who don’t know, water and grease don’t mix, so water tends to spread the fire. Wherever the water goes, the grease goes but the fire doesn’t go out. So we put the pot into the sink, ducked down behind the counter and turned the water on full blast. I mean all the way. And water and wax and fire went all over the kitchen. The fluorescent light fixture above the sink came crashing down as the flames raged to the ceiling. Little wax balls were all over the cabinets and the counter and the sink and the stove and everything else in between. The ceiling was black, and we ran around the kitchen like little maniacs to put the wax out. All we had to do now was to get rid of the evidence. Everyone grabbed a butter knife and we began scraping the wax from every surface before my mother came home. When the door opened, I was standing on the counter replacing the light fixture on the blackened ceiling. My brother and my friends were frantically rubbing the knives on wax in the sink. I was in trouble. There was no way to explain that I was just trying to make my mom a beautiful large candle. From then on, I had a babysitter. I had broken my mom’s trust. That’s a lesson. Trust is something you earn, and one stupid mistake can cost you all the privileges you have gained. Once you earn someone’s trust, don’t lose it. It is rare to earn it back.

So the theme to all this may not be apparent to all of you. The school you attend encourages you to be all these things. You don’t have to get in trouble with my mom to learn all this. In the handbook, one of my favorite publications, it says that you are expected to be courteous to each other. The person you help could later help you. Be nice to them. The honor code tells us that it is best to be honest. Don’t try to hide behind excuses. We are teachers. We are supposed to help you and guide you, but you have to be honest with us. And we know what’s going on with you. We have been doing this for a while. If you are caught breaking the rules, don’t try to hide from the punishment. Accept it, and don’t be angry about it. If you break the rules, you pay the price. If you are caught later, it will just be worse because now you were caught without coming forward. Tell people what you think, but do it kindly. You never know who else might be listening. The person you may be talking about may be right behind you. We trust you for the most part. And we like to give you second chances. But you have to make the most of it. We trust that you will make the wise decision and do the right thing. Don’t break or lose that trust. The most important thing is that there are some things that are more powerful than we are. The Sacred of Jesus is one of these things. It is a representation of the power of His love for each of us. And it combines Jesus’ most important messages. Be nice, be honest, trust in Him, and pray often because you never know who is listening on the other end. You have to have the Heart of Jesus in your life. Not just because you go to school here, but because it is all these things and more. You gotta have Heart.

Other rants you may find intersting:

2)  Technophobia

1)  Manners.