I have determined I do not like getting hit in the face with a rake handle. I don’t know what your take on it is, but I can unequivocally say it is not my favorite thing in the world. However, when you have a younger brother like mine, who eggs you on until you chase him, you’re bound to get hit in the face with a rake!
It didn’t happen the way you probably think it went down either. One Saturday I was being punished and had to rake up rocks in our backyard. Mike (my younger brother) thought this was a great time to laugh at me and infuriate me until I dropped my rake and ran after him. He was gonna get pummeled, and he was just delaying the inevitable by running.
When I got to the front corner of the house, everything went into slow motion. I had spotted the garden rake lying in my path, and it was almost like I was having this conversation in my head, “Do you think I should avoid the rake? What’s gonna happen if you step on it? I don’t know… I’ve seen a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons! Nah… you’re good.” Before I knew what was happening, I had stepped on the head of the garden rake in a full sprint. The best way to describe it is, I was running, and then I wasn’t! The handle slapped the right side of my face so hard I couldn’t see anything with my right eye other than literal stars. One second I’m in a full sprint, and the next second the whole right side of my body went numb.
Mike was lying on the ground laughing as hard as I’ve ever seen another human laugh. I was angrier than ever, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. There was no way I could let him see me cry. I walked around for the next month with this garden-rake-handle-shaped bruise on the right side of my face.
Whenever someone would see my face that didn’t know the story, and if Mike was around, he’d always ask, “Hey, did you know that if you step on a garden rake, it will hit you in the face like they do in cartoons?” Oh, he has had so many laughs over that stupid story.
It took me a long time to get over this. I could have been seriously injured, and second, that hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced up to that point in my life. For real, it felt like a stick of dynamite exploded on my face. I don’t think I could use my right eye for two weeks! And I guess if I’m completely honest, it bothered me this happened to me and not my brother! Mike would randomly tell me to watch out for garden rakes especially if we were walking somewhere together. There isn’t a good defense for that! I just had to take it.
What happens in the family stays in the family. That has never been entirely true for us. If one of us screwed up, the whole world was gonna know with plenty of colorful details. I learned never to sing new songs I heard on the radio around Mike. I have no idea how he did it, but he could listen to a song once and know all the lyrics. The moment I was confident in how a song would go, he’d ask, “What did you just sing?” Never again. Trust ruined. I honestly thought it was “where the cowboys go!” (Note: If you don’t get the song reference, look up ‘Where the Down Boys Go” by Warrant. I never heard of a ‘down boy’ before!)
When I look back at how great we were at making sure the world knew each other’s mistakes, I realized I had learned something incredible from this. I learned to live a life of transparency. Don’t get me wrong; I am certainly not eager to share my dirty laundry with the world, I’m also not desperate to hide it either. I know the thought of having someone follow you around and point out the rake-handle-shaped bruise on your face isn’t very appealing and trust me, it’s not! What is appealing though, is the freedom that comes from not having to pretend that you have it all together.
The very thing I learned from having my brothers broadcast my errors to the world is I learned to own my screw ups. I learned not to be afraid of the world finding out I didn’t think garden rakes could smack me in the face. I learned to accept the fact I am in no way perfect, and it’s ok for the world to see the real me. No matter how scary and vulnerable it may be to live this way, it beats being a slave to an unrealistic expectation I could never live up to.
While the garden rake story used to make me mad whenever it was told, I now look back on this story with amusement. I love reflecting on growing up with my brothers, and there are very few things I would change even if I could because I love the person they helped develop me into. This doesn’t mean I don’t care or I just live a life of carelessness. What it does mean though, is while on this journey of life, I keep my eyes out for garden rakes laying in my path. And if I have to explain a garden-rake-handle bruise on my face, I gladly share my story so people can avoid the same mistakes I’ve made.
Steven L Struble 