Some friends and I were out in the street throwing my boomerang at night! We were kind of playing Austrailian roulette... we'd chuck it to the right, watch it go off into the dark, see it about half a block down crossing the street from right to left under a streetlight, vanish back into the dark, then wait till we heard whoosh, whoosh, whooosh coming from the dark to our left and hold your head and duck! Great fun!
Well, one of us chucked it kind of hard and off a bit, it was taking a different path under the streetlight only a foot off the ground and rising, then, instead of hearing whoosh, whoosh, whoosh from our left in the dark.... we heard CRASH!!!! And we ran! RAN! I tell you.
We ran into my friend's house through the garage, turned on a soccer game and sat on the couch. A couple minutes later, their phone rings, his mom answers, sounds confused, then comes into the room and asks us if we know anything about a boomerang through the front door window of the mean old lady that lives across the street? We all look around and shrug our shoulders and say "What? A boomerang? That's crazy!" His mom hands me the phone and says Mrs. X wants to talk to you! How did she know I was there? So I grab the phone, deny everything, and hand the phone back to my friend's mom. Shrug my shoulders again, and go back to watching soccer.
See, we were all deathly afraid of that old lady. She was mean. We all went to grade school with her daughter. We'd had interactions with her for 8 years. She was mean. We knew it was her house where the crash came from, so we got the heck out of there as soon as we heard it.
Anyhow, after we all denied it, and my friend's mom left the room, I quietly got up, swallowed a big gulp of air, eyballed my friends like it was the last time we'd ever see each other, walked across the street and knocked on the old lady's broken door window.
To my surprise, her scary old husband answered. Sheepishly, I introduced myself. "Hello Mr. X. I'm Y." He says, "Yes, I know." with the gist of his words and his facial expression meaning, your reputation proceeds you... "I threw my boomerang and it hit your house. It wasn't on purpose. I told Mrs. X we didn't do it because I'm scared of her. I'm sorry, and I'll pay for the damages." He looked at me for a moment. His face turned to empathetic, he nodded his head in agreement, and in that instant, I knew that he knew that his wife scared little kids (we were teenagers, but, hey, we'd been there all our lives).
He went back in the house, came out with my boomerang, asked me how it worked, we talked for a while, and he said he'd fix the window and tell me how much it would be. We shook hands on the deal, and when he went in the house, I could hear her yelling about me, because I'd denied it to her on the phone just a minute ago to her, but told him the truth..... it faded as I walked back to my friend's house, and apologized to his mom. She nodded in approval.
That was the first time in my life that I can remember making a deal with another man, as a man, and shaking hands on it.
The next evening at home, the phone rang, my mom answered, then came and got me and said "Mr. X is calling for you?" kinda odd look on her face. I said thanks, took the phone from her, he told me it was about $15. I said thanks, we talked a bit, and I hung up. Mom asked what that was all about. I told her I threw my boomerang through his window by accident and he was letting me know how much it cost to fix it. I'm taking the money over now. She just looked at me with that mom look, and I left, and went over and paid him.
From that time on, any time I saw Mr. X, I'd wave, or stop and talk. We got along well. He was an engineer, and, unbeknownst to me, was friends with my dad. When he passed away, many years later, I went to his funeral. I spoke with his wife and daughter. They thanked me for coming and Mrs. X said Mr. X always spoke highly of me, and she smiled. From that time on, I'd always wave to her, or stop and say hi.
And that's what it is all about. Thanks for sharing a great story.
