Be sure your sin will find you out!

I woke up this morning thinking about my childhood. One particular memory kept running through my mind. Let me tell ya about it...

I think I was 13-years old. It was during the summer months, so I was out of school. My best friend, Kevin, and I had camped out in my papaw's woods. We woke up early, with cows munching grass around us. A whole brand new day was ahead of us. We sat around our smoldering campfire and discussed what kind of meanness we could get into.

"Well, we could go and play in Bill Knight's barn," Kevin said. "No, we best stay away from there for a while, you remember how mad he got last time," I replied. "We could go fishing in Doc Simmon's pond," I countered. "No, last time he shot at us," Kevin said. "I don't know why he cares if we catch a stupid fish out of his pond," I lamented. "Hey, I know," said Kevin, "let's walk to the House Mountain Market and buy some Skoal!" "Sounds like a good idea to me," I said. So, we headed off on our journey to the store.

Now, House Mountain Market is only about 3 miles from my parent's house, but, the route that Kevin and I took was more like 5 miles. We didn't travel the roads when we walked, we traveled the cow pastures, train tracks, and dog trails. Sadly, 13-year old kids can't do that nowadays, folks get all bent out of shape when you "trespass" on their land. Back when I was a kid, people didn't care, unless you were tearing something up.

It took us about 2 hours to reach the store, what with all of the rock throwing, snake dodging, and cow chasing we did. I'm surprised that we had enough money to even buy a can of Skoal, but apparently we did. Now, let me just say right here that neither of our parents would have approved of us dipping Skoal. And, if they found out, we would have had our hind-ends whooped with a belt. So, we sauntered up to the counter, and the lady working behind the counter, Bess, asked us what we needed. "I reckon we'll take us a can of Skoal," I said. Without even blinking an eye, she handed over a can of Skoal. We paid for our transaction and left the store. We walked out on the front walk, ripped the lid off of that snuff can and got us a big dip.

With a front lip full of Skoal, we headed back toward the way we came from. We crossed the road, ducked through the barbed wire fence, and began our journey. Now, I don't know if it was the effects of the Skoal, or if we just decided that since we were sinnin', we might as well do it up right. We made a decision that we would say as many cuss words as we possibly could on our trip back. You must remember that both of us were brought up in pretty strict Christian homes. Neither of us had ever heard our parents say any type of curse words, so our cussing vocabulary was pretty limited. In fact, the only words I remember us saying was the word for Hades, and the slang word for cow manure. But, rest assured, we said those 2 words probably a thousand times during our journey. "Kevin, what do you think about that %$#$?" "Aw, $%##, I think that's a bunch of %$#$." $%##, yeah, that's a bunch of %$#$." "Well, look at that big pile of %$#$ on the ground." "Wow, now that's a big old pile of %$#$ right there!" Boy, we were really something, dipping that Skoal and using all of those bad words. We just might become gang members like that guy in the Cross and the Switchblade books. Yep, we were rebels without any cause whatsoever.

By the time we made it to the creek across from my parents house, we were completely cussed out and had spit ourselves dry. We were so thirsty that we could hardly stand it. We laid down at the creek bank, put our lips to the cold water, and drank to our hearts content. Kevin finished drinking before I did and got up and walked up stream a bit. "Oh no, Byron!" "What?" I said. "You aint' gonna believe what's in the creek." "What?" I raised up, looked toward where Kevin was now standing and pointing. I thought I would die right there in that very spot. It was a huge, swollen, maggot infested, dead cow...We both started gagging and heaving. We also started praying for God to forgive us. We figured it was his punishment for all of the sinnin' we had done. We were both remembering the scripture from Numbers 32:23, "behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out." "Oh Lord, we are going to get typhoid fever and die!" We were both crying and watching our short 13-years flash before our eyes. What were we going to tell our parents? We looked like a couple of bawling girls, standing there on the side of that creek bank. "Let's just not say anything and they'll never know until we die."

So, we decided to keep it a secret and just sit around and wait to die. We went and laid down in the tall weeds on the hill in my papaws field. From up there you could see the mountains, the railroad tracks, and the beautiful clouds. We figured it would be a good place to spend our last hours on earth. I don't know how long we laid there, but it must have been several hours. Before we knew it, we could hear my mom calling from the bottom of the hill. "Byron, it's time for supper!" Kevin and I looked at each other and decided that since we had made it this long without dying, that maybe there was a chance for us after all. So, we parted ways, he went back home and I went down to my house to eat supper.

We both stayed worried for about a week after that. But, as time passed by, we eventually quit worrying and life went on. Our cussing career ended, and we never drank out of the creek again. Well, not before checking upstream anyways!

Moral of this story: Obey your parents. Don't drink out of creeks without looking upstream first. Quit your sinnin'.