PK: What Not to Take to Church

The preacher stopped in mid-sermon as the sudden, mysterious rattling sound commanded the attention of both congregation and himself. It did not take the fifty or so congregants and the preacher very long to determine the source of the sound, even if they could not determine what it was that caused the odd sound.

A young boy, sitting toward the front to the left of the preacher, sat frozen, as though his self-induced catatonic state might throw the spectators off suspicion. His beet-red ears, clearly visible to all those behind him because of their prominence, pointed directly to him as surely as a neon sign flashing above his head reading “HE DID IT!”

It took several seconds for the rattling sound to subside. In the meantime, the preacher resumed his sermon, hoping to draw the attention of the revival attendees at the small Baptist church back to more important matters. He was marginally successful. From the rouge shade of his own ears, it was clear that his level of discomfort was almost as great as the boy's, and he would deal with the young miscreant after the benediction was rendered.

When you are 9 years old, it's a pitifully short flash that streaks across your mind's eye when you know you are going to die. I knew I was dead the moment the plastic box flipped open unexpectedly as I tried to pry it open. I knew it when I saw, in slow motion, the tiny lead spheres spray in every direction, each landing with a series of bounces as it struck either the hardwood seat of the pew or the hardwood floor. That wooden floor, slanted toward the front of the sanctuary peculiar to old rural churches in that day. The little lead balls were everywhere—and still bouncing. And I would be dead before the evening was over. Or wish I was. I could see that much in the face—and ears—of my father as he tried to continue his sermon.

The plastic box, closed securely, had held two 20-Gauge shotgun shells worth of Number 8 Bird Shot lead pellets. I had carefully cut the shells open, poured out the pellets into the plastic box (which I am sure I had secured from one of my sisters, and which had most likely previously held something stupid and useless like hairpins—we called them “bobby pins", or maybe curler picks). I know there were two shotgun shells worth of pellets, because that's how much gunpowder it took to form my initials, KW, on the concrete floor of our basement—the parsonage, which I then lit on fire to burn the letters onto the floor. (How brilliant was I? “No, Mother, I didn't do that...I don't know whose initials those are!”).

Why I kept the bird shot in a plastic box I do not know. Why I put that box in my pocket and took it with me to that revival meeting, I do not know. Why I decided, during my father's sermon, to take that box out of my pocket and try to open it...Well, that is a question for the ages.

The message that evening seemed to end sooner than normal. When we were in the car, my father said simply, “You're going to get a whippin' when we get home.” He may as well have beheaded me then and there. I would rather he had. The car ride was a sentence and execution in itself.

Now, my father very rarely administered the whippin's. That was left to my mother. After delivering the testimony, the evidence, and the verdict, my father would retire and my mother would begin searching the kitchen and/or yard for the implement of my sentence. Any one of the items used to spank me with over the course of my childhood would be enough to make a government employee of a Children's Services department faint and fall in it today.

Yet somehow I survived. And somehow, the revival attendees had the opportunity to “revive” their spiritual relationships, in spite of the distraction and interruption caused by the preacher's kid. And we all moved ahead.

And what did I get in trouble for? This nine-year old boy did not get in trouble for playing with shotgun shells; for cutting them open and lighting gunpowder on fire in the basement of the parsonage. No, this P.K., this "Preacher's Kid" got in trouble for “acting up” in church and causing a disturbance. And of course, for embarrassing his father in front of all those people. 

But somehow I survived. Somehow, without government involvement, without years of therapy, without blame and psychological explanation, I survived.  My parents managed to raise me. They managed to survive me, and I them.

After that fateful night at that little Baptist church in the country, I never took another plastic box of lead bird shot to church with me again. Ever. Lesson learned. Oh, it didn't stop me from cutting apart shotgun shells, and I still burned my initials on the floor in gunpowder. I just never saved those tiny pellets to take to church. 

I took them to school.