Still fresh after all these years

About twelve years ago, my mom got these coat hangers that were really cool; they were the sturdy plastic kind, but they had a swivel hook so you could turn the hook around and stuff. She told us to be very careful with them, because they cost extra and she needed them for her coats.

Naturally, the very mention of “be careful” made us want to play with them even more. And they were pretty cool.

So one day I’m futzing around trying to use one like a boomerang, and SNAP! it breaks. Just like that. One minute, I’m being mildly bad, and the next I’ve broken something I wasn’t even supposed to be touching.

Immediately, I panicked. I had to do something. I would never get away with this. What could I do?

I considered simply telling them what I’d done (after all, it’s just a coat hanger). Then I followed that idea through to its logical conclusion: my mom killing me. That wouldn’t be good.

So I went with Plan B: Hide the Evidence.

The garbage wouldn’t do, my parents would just find the hanger when they went to throw something else out. That was when I got a Great Idea.

In our back hallway, we have an old armoire that my mom bought, and only realized once she got it home that it’s not wide enough to hang any coats in unless they’re facing out of the armoire. So it sat, largely untouched, for years. Underneath the coats, I knew there were two boxes full of mismatched gloves, old audio reels, and assorted other bric-a-brac that had accumulated without any real place to put it.

This was the perfect hiding place. Quickly, as my dad was due home any minute, I ran to the armoire and stuffed the pieces of the hanger in the very back, behind all the boxes, where I figured no one would ever find it.

Last night, after a long conversation wth my mom about life and raising kids and other things, I felt a wave of guilt come over me and decided to ‘fess up. I took my mom to the back hallway, told her what had happened, and reached behind the box to show her where I’d stashed the hanger.

IT WAS STILL THERE!!

As Sean put it when I showed it to him: “So, basically . . . you admitted it for no reason. You still could’ve gotten away with it!”