Why did you throw a stapler at my dad?

A few years ago, I was sitting in my recliner enjoying a nice snack when my brother called me from Virginia.

He along with my nephew and niece were making their way home from a Trail Life USA and American Heritage Girls meeting. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, my niece asks me, “Hey Uncle P, what color was the stapler you threw at my dad when you were little?” 

Yes, I spit out the water I had just sipped from my cup. Out of everything, I was not expecting that question. I needed more information because I did not recall this incident. My brother said it happened when we lived in an apartment in Milledgeville.

For a stapler to have been thrown by me toward my brother, we had to have been left alone. If the walls in that apartment could talk, they would have ratted us out for all the crazy things we did.

We liked cheese toast. I knew our mother made us cheese toast for breakfast during the week. I had never watched her do this, but I assumed she used the pop-up toaster. I took the wrapper off the cheese, placed it on bread and put it in the toaster. Did not think anything about it until mom tried to cook our pop tarts the next day and the toaster started smoking. 

I tried to blame our dog, Scruffy. My parents never fell for that. 

Another time we opened a bottle of Flintstone vitamins. We liked them so much we kept taking them. We stopped short from eating all of them, but our mom knew she had placed a brand new bottle on the counter for us to take what we needed for the day.

Once we threw the drink coaster to each other like Frisbees. Somehow, one of them broke. 

When my dad asked how it broke, I started to open my mouth but before the first syllable of the words, “Scruffy” came out, he told me not to say, “the dog did it.” Well, that sure cut to the chase, didn’t it?

My brother has since told me that he believes we could have gotten away with blaming Scruffy if I didn’t give it away with a certain kind of look on my face. 

During the summer, my brother and I were allowed to stay in the apartment while our parents worked. Our sister was taken to a babysitter’s house. We would watch TV most of the day, but of course we would get bored. 

Since our parents did not want us to go outside when they were not there, we thought we could throw a tennis ball from the kitchen into the front room. We would take turns pretending to be a pitcher while the other would crouch down as the catcher.

My brother remembers there was an unfortunate incident with a window getting broken because somebody forgot that the other person was only 5 feet tall and threw the ball about 5 feet and one inch over his outstretched glove.

So we flipped sides and put him near the window because he claimed to be the better catcher. This put me in the middle of the apartment. 

Well, apparently, there was a real metal, heavy office stapler near me. After we threw the ball with no drops or misses, my brother was feeling confident and boasted, “I could catch anything you throw at me.” 

He said I picked up the stapler and threw it. 

End over end it went through the air and hit my brother’s glove right in the pocket. The thing was, the stapler is not a ball and a glove is not designed to catch a heavy stapler. The result was the stapler spun over the top and smacked my brother right on his eyebrow. 

My brother, who is also a Sunday school teacher at his church in Virginia, has told each class this story. How this comes up, I don’t know. But I have visited his class from time to time and I am introduced as the one who threw a stapler at their teacher.

Honestly, I do not remember much about this. Maybe, since it didn’t happen to me, it does not have as big of impact to me. But, my brother does still have the mark from the incident, so I guess I will claim it.

A few months went by before my niece asked me another question. Sometimes I wonder what kind of conversations my brother is having with his children. 

She asked me if I remembered the time I got in trouble for using a spoon to put mayonnaise on a sandwich? Well of course I do. But that’s another story for another time.