The pin on the floor

My mother loved to sew, and made me several things. I can't remember any, except that when she was making a coat, I had a conversation with her about interlinings and interfacings because I didn't know the difference, and that means that I knew about some of those things before.

I remember her making that coat, cutting parts of it out. She used the dining room floor in front of the door to the kitchen. The carpet she was cutting on had a very short nap. It was dark blue with a boxy pattern. And the trouble was that she had trouble finding all the pins that were on it.

I never saw my father be angry about pins on the floor, but it was obviously a pet peeve of his: my mother mentioned it several times: "Your father does not like pins on the floor." I liked to pin things together, and she was always warning me not to leave pins on the floor when I was done. I was about 3 at the time, and I understood, though I probably needed reminders.

Mostly at that stage, though, my father wasn't home - he was helping tie up World War 2. So all of this was somewhat of a hypothetical concern.

But then he did come home. By then my sister had been born. Life got down to us all adapting to each other in our new configurations, when I found myself contemplating a very naughty act with a pin.

I might have been unhappy with my father at this stage, because when I saw a pin, perhaps on a bedside table, in my parents' bedroom, I remembered how he didn't like pins on the floor. That thought coupled with a fairly good sized rubber band at hand got my evil little mind working overtime. I remember contemplating the pros and cons for a bit. No one else was in the bedroom...

So I took the pin and stuck it into the rubber band from the inside out, so the point came out through the outside a bit. Then I put it on the carpet on the floor on my father's side of the bed, not too close, maybe a couple of feet away. And then I left.

That evening my father called my name. He and my mother were standing in their room looking at something on the floor. He pointed then to the pin-infested rubber band (just where I had left it) and asked how it got there. I said I didn't know. He pressed me on the point. I said that Debby might have done it. (This was my sister, now about 9 months old or so.) He pointed out that she was a bit too young. He kept pressing and I kept denying.

In the end I think he warned me not to put pins on the floor. Nothing came of it. Except a very long-term memory.

Hehe.