Holes

A hole in the middle of two studs....hmm. 

I am not talking about the critically aclaimed book. I am talking about holes in drywall. It wasn't until 1999 that I knew how easy they were to patch.

You see, growing up, my brothers and sisters had a favorite game to play. Remember how I talked about that long hallway in The Home of the Free entry. Well, besides lining up for our Grand ol' Flag March, there were a few other things that we did in that hall on a regular basis. Our absolute favorite of all time, was scaling the walls. The hall was just wide enough that when our legs and arms would get to a certain length, we could jimmy ourselves up the wall, like regular mountain climbers. We would place our left arm and leg on one wall and our rights on the other and up we would climb all the way to the ceiling.

Well, as you can imagine, once in a while, there was some damage. It was the COOLEST when someone's foot would go through the wall. This happened several times, mostly to my brothers. My dad is a contractor and so you would think that the holes would automatically be repaired, but NO, they weren't; those four or five holes stayed in those walls until we sold the house 10-20 years later. I always assumed fixing holes in walls was a difficult thing to do until....

Move ahead to 1999. My husband's sister and brother-in-law had just bought their first house. Everyone in LG's family was bursting with pride because they were in their early 20's and were so RESPONSIBLE. LG's parents came out from TN, and we all went to have a house-warming party. Amy and Tyler didn't know it but, our main mission was to break in their house, literally.

LG and his younger brother Jordan, just had to be boys, and at one point they were monkeying around in the dining area. Jordan jumped on LG's back. LG, because of his "man gene", for who knows what reason, decided to play out some kind of move he learned watching WWF. To make Jordan regret jumping on his back, he lunged backward, with Jordan on his back, smashing Jordan's backside into Amy and Tyler's brand spanking new wall. You can imagine Amy and Tyler's absolute HORROR at the sight of Jordan's gluteous maximus impression, and I mean, MAXIMUS, in the middle of their wall.

Amy came at LeGrand will all her vengence (this was her BRAND NEW HOUSE). LG put his tail between his legs and went, beside his dad, like a disciplined child to the local Hardware store. They bought a Drywall patch kit and fixed it up as good as new. Amy says that she can still tell where the bum went through the wall, but I think it looked fine (then again, my bathroom is 1/2 way remodeled and I am OK with that).

Well, on the way home LeGrand was on the virge of tears. (He is going to kill me for writing this) It wasn't that he felt so bad for his "man gene". No one can explain that! He mostly just felt so bad because Amy was never going to forgive him. I thought that his WWF wrestling move was impressive, and I tried encouraging, reminding LG that he had been successful at getting Jordan off his back. I, being the bistander, saw the hilarity of the situation and I tried to make light of it as best as I could. I reassured him that the wall was as good as new and that Amy would eventually see the humor.

Eventually, was the right word. It wasn't until this past year, 2004, that I FINALLY heard Amy laugh when replaying the scenario for friends. She still emphasized, "It was our BRAND NEW HOUSE."