I will be concluding my blog submissions for this class with one more tale. This story is probably my most embarrassing, but has the most significant message at the end, so pay attention! (Please note that some aspects of this story will be altered for narrative purposes.)
My family is not very religious, but since my mother grew up in a devoted Christian household, she occasionally feels obligated to go to church. We went to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Champaign-Urbana, which isn’t really a Christian focused church, but, to me, it was still boring nonetheless. The worst part of going to church was Sunday School. More school on the weekend was a definite no from me. My worst Sunday School experience was a day where I made an incredibly questionable choice, that led to one of my most cringe worthy memories.
Instead of regular class, we had a cleaning/organizing day. My task was to take inventory of church related things in some room. When I entered the room, I was taken aback by its overall dustiness and dinginess. It was certainly a creepy setting, which was strike one for me! The work itself was not difficult, but the scary room made me uneasy. After about 20 minutes, as I lifted a box, a cockroach jumped out and ran away. I squealed in terror, almost dropping the box! This was strike two! I continued to work, but was growing increasingly spooked. Then, I heard horrifying rustling sounds coming from the window in the room. I turned and to my dismay, observed giant rat creatures climbing on the grates on the outside of the window. Strike three! I was utterly terrified but knew I had to finish the work I was assigned. So in my head I thought the best option to deescalate the situation would be to somehow scare them away. I saw a basketball and decided I would throw it at the window and the noise would make the rats scurry away. I forgot, however, to take into account that the building is decrepit, so the windows were super weak. I threw the ball with minimal force, as I was just trying to have it bounce back to me, and as it collided with the window there was a small explosion of glass. I busted the whole thing and there was glass everywhere. Shocked and fearing the consequences, I quickly put the basketball back where I found it and finished taking inventory.
I went straight to my parents and we left shortly after. My hope was that the Sunday School people would forget who they assigned to what task, so I wouldn’t get blamed. This was not the case. A few hours later my parents got an email from the person in charge of the Sunday School program and asked them if I had any idea what happened to the window. I told my parents I had no clue what this man was talking about, and my parents replied saying I was innocent. Well it turns out they wrote down who did what task and I was the only one who worked in the spooky room. There clearly was not a big, broken window before I went in the room so no one else could’ve done it. So, I was exposed by the church and my parents had to pay for the damages. I was severely punished for my actions.
The moral of the story is to never throw basketballs at windows and if you do, don’t lie to a church and your parents.
