The Juvenile delinquent

The Juvenile Delinquent

I was five years old and not yet in school. My brother was three. Mom had to be gone a lot during the day for some reason so Aunt Pearl would sit with us. Many of the details are sketchy because of my age but I remember disliking Aunt Pearl immensely. She was very old, of course, to a five year old everyone is old. She dressed very shabbily and had lots of wrinkles and a dark hair grew out of her chin. She had a darker mustache than most men and a voice that I couldn’t stand especially when she was yelling at me, which was pretty much all the time. Most of all I didn’t like Aunt Pearl because she wasn’t my Mamma!

Aunt pearl never married. She was engaged in her younger years but something happened and she was left at the altar. She never recovered from the trauma enough to try again. She was very poor as was most women in her position in the fifties with no skills outside the home. She would come and live with whoever had a need for childcare, help after a newborn baby or maybe bed rest after an illness or surgery, for room and board and whatever the person could spare. I didn’t understand at the time that she probably went without meals frequently. She couldn’t stand to see food wasted so instead of throwing away food left on a plate she would eat it as she cleaned the table. I observed this often and thought it was very odd. We fed the scraps to the hog at the end of the day. Of course this change in her eating habits caused her digestive system lots of grief, but I won’t go there.

She was a creature of habit. As soon as we finished breakfast she would clear the table and do the morning dishes. She always had one eye out the window so she could catch the paper carrier delivering the paper. She always retrieved the paper as soon as it was delivered. She didn’t bother to get her coat no matter how cold it was. This particular day there was about six inches of new snow on the ground with a bright sun shining and a brisk twenty-nine degrees. As soon as she got off the porch I locked the door. My brother hadn’t seen what I had done but as soon as she got back to the porch and discovered the locked door she started pounding for someone to come and unlock the door. He went over to unlock the door and I ran over and pushed him down.

“Don’t you unlock that door!” I yelled in a menacing voice. Then I pushed him down.

“Knock, knock, Let me in! It’s cold out here!” The muffled, anxious  voice came through the door.

He tried again and I shoved him down again. When he got up and went back to the door I ran over and picked up his prized little red wagon the one he played with constantly, and pulled it over to the big wood stove that heated the house.

“If you unlock that door, I’ll throw this wagon in the stove!” I threatened.

He did and so did I. She bolted in the door and grabbed the wagon and pulled it from the fire. I don’t remember how much damage I did to the wagon but there was always a spare key in the flower pot hanging on the porch by the front door from then on.

My next recollection was that evening, standing by my bed with my pants around my knees and my backside on fire. I still remember that fire and being alone in my room by my bed. I thank God that I had parents that were parents and not my best friends otherwise I might be writing to you from a jail cell! I think Aunt Pearl left shortly after that. I never got the chance to apologize to her later in life so Aunt Pearl, I am so very sorry!

Dan Fulton, reformed Juvenile delinquent.