Landing on Your Feet

Joe Cathey is recounting whimsical days of his youth. Back when he used to drop his cat out the window onto his sleeping bulldog to see what happens.

Now I don't have many stupid kids stories. That is what happens when you're an introvert, you stay home and don't get in much trouble. At least not until you go to college. But here is a quality window story.

It was winter in the mid 1980s. Snow was on the ground and I was stuck in Sunday school with a gang of other boys in our late elementary years. Our teacher failed to show up so we had to keep ourselves occupied until church started. You can see where this is going.

Well our sunday school room is on the back side of the church. Because of the lay of the land, our second story window is only about a half story up. The ground is at about window level on the first floor and is covered in nice soft snow. We wondered if we could safely jump out of the window without hurting ourselves. It took about a half hour before anyone worked up the nerve to try it.

Sure enough, he landed safe and sound and more people followed. I didn't try it until at least the second or third go round because I'm a good introvert and also afraid of depths (heights are fine, depths uhh uhh).

Now where is the comedy? Well you see my classroom happened to be located directly above the senior pastor's office. The fact that he was leading an adult Sunday school class in there didn't help us one bit. Fortunately my parents weren't in it. Unfortunately other boys were not so lucky. I don't think I've seen Rev. Brown's face quite that color before or since.

We all got yelled at. Some mercy and grace was dispensed later when the church realized they screwed up and left a seven or eight pre-pubescent boys without adult supervision.