Mom should have made me apologize for this, but she didn’t.

For most of my childhood, I had a paper route. If there was a contest for best paperboy in Philo, I probably would have won because I could stuff, fold and rubberband papers really fast. Then, I’d cram them into my bike with the dual baskets on the back and take off. I was pretty quick. The only thing that slowed me down was dogs. I was afraid of dogs as a kid, and it seemed like Philo had a lot of dogs running loose.

To help with this, my mom bought me some stuff called “Mailman’s Best Friend”. If a dog got too close, I could just spray a little of this stuff in his face and he’d leave me alone. Everything would be fine; at least that’s what mom told me. The thing is, after she bought it for me, I never had to use it. Maybe just the sight of that red can bouncing around in my front basket kept the dogs away.

I couldn’t leave well enough alone though. One early Saturday morning, I was delivering a paper to Old Mrs. Brazelton’s house when her dog decided to go nuts. The good news was that the dog was inside a fence that I didn’t even have to go inside of; I just had to put the paper in a box on my side of the fence and move on. But the dog was going crazy and probably waking everybody up, so I gave him a quick squirt right in the face with “Mailman’s Best Friend”. The dog started crying and rolling around in the grass, and I went on my way, finished my route and went home.

A couple hours later, mom got a phone call from Mrs. Brazelton. Apparently, she had seen the whole thing through her window and was none too happy. She was back from the vet, where she’d had to have the dog’s eyes washed out. She informed mom that she would be expecting me to reimburse her for the vet bill, which was just short of $100. That’s where my memory ends. I don’t remember having to go down and apologize for being so stupid, and I don’t remember ever having to pay the bill. Then again, I never saw any of the money from my paper route until I was much older, so maybe mom did use my money to pay the bill. Mom handled all that part for me and, after I graduated from college, she finally gave me my money that she’d been saving for me for all those years.

Mom was normally very strict. I don't know why I didn't get severely punished for this.