THE DAY MY BROTHER RAN AWAY
Have you ever felt like giving up and running away, just throwing in the towel and starting over someplace else? Nothing is going right and it seems like everyone is against you. That happened to my little brother once. He didn’t care for school at all. In this day and time, he would have been in special education classes. He just did grasp the concept of reading or arithmetic. It wasn’t that he couldn’t learn, it just took him longer than others. We had a new teacher that year who wasn’t very understanding, whose teaching style was ridicule and sometimes even punishment. Because we went to a one-room school with all the grades together, I told the teacher that I would set with my brother and help him.
My brother was a free spirit and would rather be roaming the fields with our family dog than reading and doing math. At eight he could shoot better than his older brother and kept the dinner table supplied with rabbits and squirrels. He couldn’t understand why he had to learn to read, he was going to stay on the farm for the rest of his life anyway. He didn’t need to read to take care of the animals, and he could drive the tractor and shoot his gun, so what else did he need?
On this particular day, we had a math test. The teacher handed out papers with the problems on them. Each class had a test appropriate to its age group. We were to do the test and then hand in the papers. When we were finished we could go outside for recess. Everyone was finished and going outside except my brother. He just didn’t get how to do the problems so he just put a bunch of numbers down handed in the test and went outside. Later in the afternoon, the teacher handed back the corrected tests. When he got to our desk he gave me my paper but slapped my brothers down on the desk with a big red F on it. He said in a loud voice that he had to stay in the classroom the rest of the week with no recess and maybe that would teach him to pay attention and try harder.
My brother cried all the way home and said if he was such a dummy he didn’t belong with normal people. He was repeating what some of the other kids had said to him after school. Mom tried to talk to him and dad told him he would learn he just needed to stick with it. But there was no consoling him. He went upstairs packed his suitcase and said he was going to find a place where he didn’t have to go to school. He came down and went to the kitchen, fixed himself a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, put them in his suitcase, and started off down the road. Dad let him get down the road a ways then followed him. He got down to the creek at the bottom of the hill and sat down. He was still crying and talking to himself about how mad he was at the teacher and the kids that made fun of him.
He sat down on the creek bank to eat a sandwich when dad came up and sat down with him. He said he hoped he didn’t mind but he was going to leave home too. That he was tired of milking cows and bailing hay. That all those dumb cows did was eat and he would rather go fishing. My brother looked at him and said,
“But you can’t leave, who would take care of the farm and mom and the girls? His brother couldn’t do it all he was only 10.” Dad said that they would have to get by the best they could. They sat there awhile eating sandwiches and talking about fishing. It was getting evening and dad said they better get going it would be dark soon and it looked like it might rain.
My brother told dad maybe he would go back home and help take care of the farm. He had decided that it wasn’t right to leave his brother to do everything and I had told him I would help him with his school work and not to listen to what the other kids said to him. They didn’t know everything either. So they walked back to the house put the suitcase on the stairs and went out to the barn to feed the cows.
Later that night when the other kids were in bed and I was reading I overheard mom and dad talking in the kitchen. Dad told her the conversation he and my brother had setting on the creek bank and mom told him that he had packed one shirt, 2 pairs of underwear, and 6 pairs of socks in his suitcase. They laughed at the ingenuity of an 8-year-old and how special he was going to be.
My brother always struggled with learning. But he stuck with it and became a journeyman carpenter and an over-the-road truck driver. He might not have been a quick learner but he had more common sense than most adults I knew. You could always rely on him to figure things out one way or another. He married a wonderful girl and they raised a fine family of boys and now are enjoying their grandsons.
If you feel that the world is closing in and your future looks mighty dim remember your father God is always watching over you. That he has time to set on a creek bank and listen to what is going on in your world. That if you talk to Him enough he will help you figure out what is going sideways in your life and how to straighten things out. His word says he will never leave you or forsake you. If you would like to know more about Him leave me your email and I will get back to you and tell you about our ever-loving father.
REMEMBER YOU ARE LOVED
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