Glad You Forgot

By Robert Rhoades

One day when I was only about 11 years old, my daddy had been drinking. It didn’t take too many beers to light his bulb. But he made a comment that instilled fear in me for years. He said, “Boy … when you turn 16 I’m going to take on you and your two brothers and I’m going whoop the tar out of all three of you!”

I didn’t realize at the time that it was the alcohol doing most of the talking, but I started dreading my sixteenth birthday from that moment on. Years later, about twenty years later, I told daddy how I had feared turning sixteen and why. He looked at me with a puzzled look and told me, “I never said no such thing!”

All I could say was, “I was so glad you forgot.”