Youthful Indiscretions

Most people rebelled when they were teenagers. With me, the my rebelling was done between the age of 5 and 7. I think the Catholic school I attended was a bad influence on me (just kidding).

Hot Drinks. The thing I missed the most when my parents joined the LDS faith was sweet tea the way my aunts used to make them. Within a year after they were baptized, Dad became the Branch President and Mom, the Relief Society President. I got a box of tea from the store and hid it in our food pantry. I would make myself a nice cup of sweet tea and ahhh ... until Mom caught me and gave me a good scolding and whooping. I also recall a time when I poured myself a cup of black coffee at some family gathering and shared it with a couple of cousins. Boy, that was a nasty gulp to swallow. No wonder people put cream and sugar into coffee. Yuck! However, I do love the smell of coffee ...

Alcohol. When I was about 6-years-old, grandpa used to give me a shot glass of red wine every morning before school. He told me that it was vitamins and that the burning feeling I felt was the vitamins working. One morning I was running late getting ready and told Mom to hurry up so I can get my vitamins from grandpa. She followed me when I went down to the main house and saw me sipping my shot glass worth of red wine. I wasn’t allowed to visit grandpa unsupervised for a few weeks after that. I wonder if I ceased to be mellow after that?

Smoking. When I was about 7-years-old, my brother, a cousin and I took a cigarette from my uncle's pack and tried to smoke it under a bed. We had no idea how to smoke, so we lit the cigarette and blew on it. Couldn’t understand why smoking was such a big deal. I swear we DID NOT inhale! Grandpa smelled the smoke, smacked us from under the bed with his cane, whipped us with his handkerchief and flicked our ears. Triple Owie!