Head down. One foot back. Deep breath. “Charge!” Eight-year-old me took off running alongside my older brother. We jumped, hurtled through the air, and then landed on the soft cushions of our parents’ bed. Being the amazing gymnasts we were, we then flipped into perfect somersaults and came out lying at the top of the bed on the pillows, proud of our successful routine.

We had once again performed one of our favorite pastimes. We did this quite often, finding joy in the thrill of flipping onto the soft, king-sized bed. Since we had never been hurt before while doing this particular exercise—except the occasional misjudgment that led to us flying off the side of the bed—we continued our efforts to flawlessly execute our majestic tumbles.

I stood at the edge of the bed once more, ready to spring towards the fluffy mattress, unaware it would be my last somersault for a while. As I jumped, I realized I had started too close, but there was no going back. I tucked, flopped onto the bed, and extended my legs at the top of the bed. THUD! I looked up and saw only half my foot; the other half was jammed in the wall.

I looked wildly at my brother, who gave me a shocked stare in return. We sprung into action! I dislodged my foot from the wall, leaving a gaping hole. Neatly cleaning up the excess wall bits that came out, we frantically threw pillows at the heel-sized gap in a vain effort to hide what I had done.

Being the sly kids we thought we were, we reasoned that our parents would never discover the hole behind the fortress of stacked pillows. When they came home, we anxiously awaited to see if they had discovered anything out of the ordinary. To our surprise, they did not say anything or give any recognition to our suspicious behavior.

We just might get away with this!

Morning came and still they stayed quiet, as if our rowdy incident had never occurred. Two days passed, and we soon became worried.

They still don’t know about it!
 What if the hole never gets fixed?
 Surely they would have seen it by now! 
Thoughts raced through our heads, trying to come up with any way to get out of our escalating predicament. Finally, after three days of waiting, we decided to tell them about the new hole that had found a home above their bed.

Shaking and sweating nervously, I went to my Dad and confessed what had happened. Expecting him to be upset, what he told me next left me dismayed instead.

“I’ve known about the wall since the first night. I was waiting to see how long it would take for you to tell me yourself,” he told us. He went on to explain that each day we waited, he extended how long we would be grounded.

If I had gone to my dad sooner, I wouldn’t have been grounded as long—or maybe not at all! The longer I waited, the worse the situation had become for me. That day my dad had taught me a valuable lesson.

When you do something wrong or have a problem in your life, instead of avoiding it in hopes that it will go away, confront it! Face it head on! If you ignore it, over time it may grow bigger and become more troublesome. It will never be resolved unless you focus on the problem at hand. Just like that hole in the wall would not go away unless I acknowledged it, problems won’t go away until they are acknowledged as well.

I see now the amazing way my dad dealt with the situation. He could have come to me and lectured me on why it’s bad to put holes in the wall. Instead, he let it slide until my guilt had built up, which helped me learn my lesson even better. Now that I’m older, I can look back and see why it is so important to face up to my problems.

I have also realized that using a pillow to cover up a hole in the wall is not very effective.