The Truth Can Hurt

It all comes down to peer pressure when you’re still in your teens. You want to keep up with the Jones’ and you’ll go to any means to put yourself into the limelight and be a member of the clique, so you have to do some daring deed to give your gang a kick. Because we lived out of the town on some land beside a creek, we only had tank water so our baths are once a week. Power hadn’t reached us yet, and our dunny was quite rank, for we had an outside dunny, not a lavish septic tank. And on this point peer pressures ugly head was bared. I got teased about the outside dunny and then I was dared, to rid it from our social scene to keep in with me peers … I cannot let the gang down - or I’ll be turfed out on me ears. Each day I visited the dunny I would sit upon the seat, and ponder over tactics and what method would complete the mission of destruction that our dunny will endure, once I find the perfect moment for one outside dunny fewer. It was the low and leaden clouds that descended once again, which triggered ‘it is time’ once we had a week of rain, for the creek had swollen now and lapped the dunny wall, so I levered with a crowbar and watched the dunny fall. Into the creek it’s swept away, tumbling ‘round and ‘round. I’m feeling pleased with what I’ve done, but that night I found, my Father was the least impressed of his guilty eldest son, for he stood before me in the kitchen - and I’m squarely in the gun. He said “We’re going to the woodshed Son - that means you and me.” The woodshed is the torture chamber, where I’ll go across his knee. I asked me Dad the reason why - he said “What you did isn’t funny. I know it’s you who pushed into the creek our little outside dunny.” I looked at the floor, next up at Dad, and then admitted “Yes I did. But Dad at school the other day, we learnt about another kid. George Washington his name was; he was just as bad as me. He picked up his Fathers axe and chopped down his cherry tree.” “But because the kid admitted he chopped down the cherry tree, he did not get into trouble - I told the truth, so why punish me?” My Father gave a long hard look - “On the point of truth I do agree, but George Washington's ‘old man’ wasn't in the cherry tree.”