What comes around

This email just received from St. Caffeine - over at Baseball, books, and... - in reference to an earlier post.

Sorry, I can't help you with the the rubber paddles conundrum. You didn't really expect any help from AL on that one, though, did you?

No, what I'm writing about is the story involving the berries and Ipecac (man, that's a funny word) I was just wondering if this story might not have some bearing the MUCH later incident in which you allowed your brother and a friend (I think) to have their stomachs pumped because of the over-ingestion of Sudafed when you knew they had not, in fact, swallowed the actual pills. Sort of a "It happened to me, not it's your turn," thing.

I started to ask about his in the comments, but I was afraid that VolBro might not know of your complicity in that incident.

Sorry, I have a really good memory for things that happened long ago. Wait, that really happened, didn't it? I hope I didn't just invent that whole thing.

No, you didn't just invent that whole thing. And really that's not the whole of that story. I'm not as cruel as all that.

OK - my brother and his friend entered my room - without permission- and found my bottle of Sudafed. They proceeded to suck the candy coating off the Sudafed and then when they got down to the nasty tasting medicine bit - they spit the pills onto my bed, leaving a horrible mess of saliva and red food coloring and allergy medicine.

I told my dad, with the intention of my brother being punished for a) trespass, b) theft, c) property damage and d) ickiness. But Dad over-reacted and worried about how the Sudafed "overdose" might affect VolBro's health and and in his panic wouldn't listen to how they hadn't really ingested it. I could see that relief would have been Dad's reaction at that point if I had managed to get through to him, meaning VolBro would not have learned an important life lesson about respecting others' property. Besides the ER had already been called, so really it was out of my hands at that point.

VolBro knows all about this now, and he completely understands.

______

In an unrelated incident, just as I was coming upstairs to post this, the Vol-in-Law and I heard a terrible noise and then a splash. My cat Fancy (yes, named after the Bobby Gentry penned, Reba McEntire performed song about a call girl) had been fighting with another cat on the roof of our kitchen extension. Fancy got the worst of it and fell off the roof and then into the fish pond. She's ok, but a little damp and a little embarrassed.