Mama and daddy hung a Johnny Jumper in a doorway to help entertain Lila when she was just a small baby. I had been warned that I was too big for it more than once. One evening when mama and daddy had company, my desire to swing in Lila’s jumper got the best of me. My reckoning was that since Mama and daddy were busy visiting their guests, they would never know I disobeyed their commands. I was a person who always minded my parents, and I assumed they would never know if I took just one tiny little swing in Lila’s Jumper.

Since I was only two and one half years old, I had a bit of trouble climbing into the contraption. After a struggle, I finally made it. So when I made that first “tiny little swing”, it made the clamps pull away from the door and when the jumper fell, it took me with it as I went scooting head first onto the floor.

The racket I made brought mama scurrying into the room to see what had happened. I had skinned a layer of skin off my nose and was crying when mama reached me. The humiliation of my disobedience and the pain from my nose did not help the wrath of the well deserved scolding I got from mama. Since I didn’t get any sympathy, I went directly to bed to pout.

I may have been just over two years old, but I can still well remember waking up often during the night and the feeling of discomfort of that injured nose.

Crime just does not pay!