They never caught me doing anything bad, but perhaps that’s because I never did anything bad. I was one of the good kids you sometimes read about.
Masturbating, now I was caught doing that once. Well, not so much “caught” as “observed”, and quickly at that–door open, sudden realization, back up, door close, fancy new lock installed a few days later. Nothing was ever said nor was the incident even acknowledged, but it was still awfully embarrassing.
Oh, I just thought of one. Mostly an accident, and more a story of turning myself in playing the martyr card than being caught outright, but still bad:
When I was 12-13ish, I burned a hole in the carpet while tending the fire. I was turning over a log, but it proved to be burned more thoroughly than I thought it was and it fell apart in the tongs. Flaming coals, fanning out across the floor, falling everywhere, except, by some divine intervention, just where I was sitting. The floor in front of the fireplace was mostly tile, so that was no problem, but a few flew further out onto the carpet and melted down into it. I cut away the melted parts and washed out the soot and ash, then carefully trimmed the surrounding carpet, gradating it into the hole, until eventually it just looked like a depression and not that anything was missing. With the light source where it was, and the fabric combed just right, it was completely invisible. By morning, of course, with the primary light moved from the wall sconces to the window, the shadow would give it away, so this was merely a time buying measure.
Remembering that the older logs in the wood pile had spots of mushroomy fungus growing on them that tended to pop when burning, I invented the Story of the Exploding Log–a saga of one poor, innocent boy made victim by the fierce and fiery talons of a log so suffuse with the baneful, malevolent, cancerous fungus that, indeed, it burned not with pop or crackle, but the explosive force like that of a bomb, who, in the face of this horror so abject one could–without exaggeration–liken it to the very gates of Hell burst open, struggled valiant and heroically to save not just all their worldly possessions, but verily Life itself, and his glorious and laudable victory over the dastardly foe–a victory tinged only with a tragic hole burned in the carpet.
That’s a pretty good imitation of the style I told it in. In fact, throw a few more metaphors and several dozen more colorful adjectives in there, and you’ll have to imagine the very animated acting that accompanied it. I’ve always been given to being a little overly dramatic and fantastical. I dare say, that story fooled noöne. All the same, it must have made a good impression, as the matter was dropped and never spoken of again.
