Roger Fire Eraser
When I was in the 10th grade, a new church was constructed near my home in southeast Texas. Several of my friends and I spent time volunteering on the work crew, since it was to be our church. The members of our congregation were extremely proud of the beautiful brick building that replaced an old run-down wooden structure that no longer met our needs.
When the building was completed, we began holding our weekly youth activities there every Wednesday night. One evening Roger and I went in to check out the new kitchen. For some reason which makes sense only to adolescent boys, Roger switched on one of the electric stove burners, and before long it was glowing bright red. The next logical step for the adolescent boy was to see if something would burn – in this case a rubber school eraser. Almost immediately the room was engulfed with the sickening smell of burning rubber. The eraser quickly melted and a small cloud of black smoke rose from the burner. We had no idea that new building had smoke detectors, since we didn’t even know such a thing existed. Within a short time, fire alarms sounded. Roger quickly turned off the burner and we rushed out of the kitchen.
I heard one of our adult leaders yelling for everyone to get outside because the building was on fire. I stood outside in the growing darkness along with the other teenagers but didn’t say a word about how the smoke alarm had been triggered. Far from finding humor in the situation, I was mortified to see adults frantically running through the building trying to find the source of the fire. They soon discovered the problem and came back outside, determined to pin the blame on someone about my age. I kept my mouth shut and tried to blend into the crowd during the inquisition.
For his part, Roger had vanished. Then, as we all mingled around outside, an ugly old two-seat Rambler with its lights off cruised through the parking lot and headed for the exit. As it passed under the parking lot lights, there appeared to be no one behind the wheel. But I new immediately that it was Roger, hunkered down low in the driver’s seat. As the car entered the street from the parking lot, Roger did a strange thing. Instead of turning left away from the church toward his home, he turned right and passed in front of the assembled crowd.
All heads followed as the Rambler drove down the highway toward a gas station a couple of blocks away. None of us spoke as the little car then made a U-turn and headed back in our direction as Roger tried to head home. He was pushing the gas pedal all the way to the floor, but the little Rambler was struggling to build up speed. As he passed us again, we could still see no driver, but the adults had a fairly good idea who put the eraser on the stove. I never came forward with the fact that I was an accomplice to the mischief.
Sometimes we’re a lot like Roger. We don’t think things through before we act and somehow think that no one will ever know about our mistakes if we just “lay low.” That is seldom the case.
