Forty-three years seems like a long time to remember the name of a mere friend. I have already forgotten the name of an old lady who was a customer on my paper route when I was a twelve-year-old boy in Marinette, Wisconsin back in 1954. Yet it seems like just yesterday that she taught me a lesson in forgiveness that I can only hope to pass on to someone else someday. On a Saturday afternoon, a friend and I were throwing rocks onto the roof of the old lady's house from a secret spot in her backyard. The object of our play was to observe how the rocks changed to missiles as they rolled to the roof's edge and shot out into the yard like comets (彗星) falling from the sky.
I found myself a perfectly smooth rock and sent it for a ride. The stone was too smooth, however, so it slipped from my hand as I let it go and headed straight for a small window on the old lady's back porch. At the sound of broken glass, we took off from the old lady's yard faster than any of our missiles flew off her roof.
I was so scared about getting caught that I was concerned about the old lady with the broken porch window all the time that night. However, a few days later, when I was sure that I hadn't been discovered, I started to feel guilty for her bad luck. She still greeted me with a smile each day when I gave her the paper, but I was no longer able to look into her eyes.
I made up my mind that I would save my paper delivery money, and in three weeks I had the seven dollars that I thought would cover the cost of her window. I put the money in an envelope with a note explaining that I was sorry for breaking her window and hoped that the seven dollars would cover the cost for repairing it.
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I waited until it was dark.
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The next day, I handed the old lady her paper.
