The first of these shortcuts is cutting across three sets of driveways after leaving my frontdoor. In the process of doing so, I end up having to cross over a patch of "garden" that one of my neighbours have dug up. When I say garden, this is simply a trough of dirt that has been turned over and bordered. Not knowing whether this patch of dirt is supposed to be shooting up some sort of plant or not, I had, for the past few months, been jumping over it. However, nothing has grown out of that patch of dirt thus far, and as a consequence, today I didn't jump over the whole bunch of dirt and rather did a little hop so that I left a footprint embedded.
As I continued to walk off down the road, I was reminded of a memory similar to this situation.
Years and years ago, when I was still a wee little thing, my family had visited some relatives one summer. Now, these relatives had been in the process of renovating their house, and there were a series of construction zones throughout. One of these zones was the area connecting the kitchen to the patio and living room, and for some reason there was a trough of cement freshly poured right between the patio and kitchen entrance.
Early in the morning, being happy and hyper to be out in such sexy weather (not that little innocent me was calling it sexy at that time) I ran down eagerly to join the older people and in so doing, I accidently ran in a way that my foot stepped right into that patch of drying cement.
"Uh oh", I thought to myself and thinking fast, I quickly wiped my foot on the mat placed by the patio doors and quietly joined everyone else.
Later in the day, we were called down and were questioned. "Whose foot is this?" They asked. Scratching my nose, fidgeting and acting cool, I shrugged and acting as innocent as I could be. I tried passing it off so that maybe if I was a cool customer they'd definitely think it was my younger siblings or maybe even some of the older relatives.
"IQ, you sure you didn't accidently step in this?" They smiled down knowingly at me. "What? Noo...it wasn't me.." My mind did somersaults reconsidering the morning scene and thinking of the possibilities of someone having seen me do the crime, and going through the scene again and again, I quickly concluded that noone had witnessed me committed the crime and therefore they had no evidence against me. I smiled up at them charmingly. I felt smart.
Then they smiled at each other again. I was suspicious. Why do they seem to be laughing at me? I furrowed my brows looking at them with my fists on my hips. "Can I go play now?"
That's when they pulled out a measuring tape. My eyes darted side to side. What's that? How come they weren't interrogating the others?! How...unfair.
"IQ, maybe you can help us. Let's see what size this footprint is and see who's foot matches the size."
That's when it hit me. OH NO! In reflex I curled up my toes to make them somehow look much smaller than they really were. Oh no no no! This couldn't be!! I'mmmmmmm dooomed! I bit my lip in distress as I realized what was happening. I sunk down to the floor and covered my face.
"It was an accidenttt," I whimpered.
To my consternation, they burst out laughing. How rude. I got up again and replaced my hands on my hips. "Well, if you are done laughing can I go play now?"
And with that, I hopped over the dried concrete with my footprint and went to play my Sherlock Holmes.
