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TODAY'S
GIGGLES
12/12/2007
NO KIDDING, WE WERE KIDS ONCE.
My mother never lied to
us about anything except Santa Clause,
the Easter Bunny and where babies came from.
I believed everything she said.
After all, I almost always got what
I wanted on Christmas morning and a basked of colored eggs every
Easter. Storks, on three occasions, had brought me baby brothers
during the night.
When I was about 10 years
old (in the early 1930s), I attended the
First Methodist Church in Clarksdale, Mississippi. One of my
Sunday
school assignments was to memorize the Ten Commandants.
Mother was quite busy in
the kitchen, so I took my Bible in there
and sat at the table reciting out loud. The first six commandments
I knew very well. However, when I got to the seventh, "Thou shall
not commit adultery," suddenly I realized I didn't know what that
meant. I had not been explained by the Sunday school teacher, nor
had I ever heard that word at my home.
"Mother, what's adultery?" I asked.
My mother's arms stiffened in
the sink. A quick thinker, she replied
without any hesitation at all. "That's sticking your tongue out at
your
neighbor."
I was horrified -- I had
committed adultery with my brothers! when
I became angry. I would stick out my tongue at them and make a
"face." I vowed never to do that at my brothers or friends again.
Thereafter, I was
appalled when I saw my playmates settle a fuse
by sticking out their tongues at their opponents. I'd think, "Oh,
no!
They've committed adultery! They broke one of the Ten Commandants
How terrible!"
I was 20 years old when I found out that Mother had lied to me.
Martha Pattertson Spille Hendren
