Don't Fence Me In

The East Texas sun was high in the sky when he stepped out of the house. Noah had been sleeping well past any respectable time to wake up and when he finally rolled out of bed, he found the house empty. He decided to investigate further and stepped out the front door into the blinding sunlight and heat that sucked the very breath right out of him. He blinked several times, looked around and finally spotted his father and uncle working on the tractor. He panned the property and spotted his mother cleaning out the van with his sister happily supervising the process.

After a few moments, he walked over to his father and his uncle, sighed and said, "I'm bored." They looked at him incredulously. "There is a pool, endless toys, a sister, a cousin, a trampoline, and a wide expanse of pasture. GO PLAY! ", replied his father.

"BOY! If you want something to do... get to work..." replied his uncle, "...there is plenty to do around here. Feed the chickens, feed the ducks, feed the dogs, help with the tractor..."

"Can someone take me for a ride in the golf cart?"

At this point, his father told him he would have to wait until later when the adults were done working but his uncle said, "You are big enough to drive that golf cart yourself. There's nothing you can hurt around here, get on it and get gone!"

And so he did. He took off in the golf cart down the road that divides the property into two pastures.

His mother got nervous and walked to the end of the driveway to watch him. Just as he was instructed, when he got to the end of the pasture, he turned around to come back. His mother observed as he then did what can only be described as an eighteen point turn and started back up the road toward the house. She sighed with relief. The eighteen point turn was funny and bordered on ridiculous, but at least he was being cautious.

His little sister then called for their mother's attention and his mother reluctantly- but partially confident that he was on his way back up the straight road- went to see what the little girl needed. As soon as she reached his sister, there was a loud bang followed by the sound of the boy crying in the distance.

She yelled for the boy's dad as she was sprinting down the driveway and then down the road. She arrived first to find Noah standing in the middle of the road crying. The golf cart was straddling the pasture fence. She did a quick assessment and discovered that Noah was crying more because he was afraid of getting into trouble than because he was in pain and she then calmly got on the golf cart and backed it off the fence to assess the damage.

By that time, his father and uncle had arrived. Noah was dubbed the "fence wrecker" and they began discussing repairing the fence and that it would have to wait until later in the day when it was cooler since the fence was in the direct sunlight.

Luckily, there was a spare fence post in the garage and all of the supplies needed to repair the fence were lying around the property so Noah didn't have to contribute any money from his savings. His mother did, however, require that he be present for and help with the repair.

We are thankful Noah was not hurt, that our family was such a good sport about the destruction of their fence and a mental note has been made by all not to let Noah get a driver's license until he is AT LEAST 21.

I still have no idea how he fell off of a completely straight road.

{the battle scar}