Usually when my parents go off on a rant that starts with “Well back in my day...” I ignore them completely and think about something else all together. But there are always exceptions to the same old boring stories they tell. Not too long ago my dad started in on one of his long tales about his life in high school. I began to start to drift off and shut him out of my mind when he suddenly came in with something I had never heard before. “Yeah my friend Todd used to pee in Fred’s shampoo bottle after practice,” my dad said without even missing a beat. My head snapped around swiftly when my subconscious mind heard the shocking statement that my dad had just declared. I asked in a perplexed voice,” WHAT?” trying to hear his story from the beginning again from the point where I shut my hearing off.
My dad began again and explained to me that Fred, one of my father’s high school football teammates, used to make fun of anyone he could on the football team. Many people didn’t like Fred and another one of my father’s teammates, Todd, was so sick of Fred that he tried to find a way to get back at him. One thing that Fred did more than make fun of people was wash his hair. Todd devised a plan to get back at Fred by peeing in his shampoo bottle. When Fred was held a little later after practice one day, Todd decided to execute his plan. He opened the bottle and urinated in the top just enough that Fred wouldn’t know right away at least. To Todd’s surprise, Fred didn’t realize at all, so the urinating in the shampoo bottle continued almost every day and to everyone’s surprise Fred never realized that there was urine in his shampoo or for that matter that his shampoo bottle never got any emptier.
I was shocked that my dad told me this story at all, but I think I can pick out a reason why he told me this crazy account. Deep inside all of the horrors of his story, my dad had intended to show me another way the golden rule is effective. Since Fred was very disrespectful to many people, he opened himself up to harm from the people that he mistreated. So if Fred would have just “treated other like he wanted to be treated” he would have been a little better off and would have avoided this terrible prank that could have scarred him for life if he knew what was going on.