Reflections by Stephen Coats based on the memoirs of Nancy Coats
There are those pivotal moments in a young boy’s life when you make a choice for better or worse that shapes who you are. One of the first I remember was when I was 6 years old, living with my family in a foreign land, not knowing the rules of behavior. I was also a very adventurous kid that didn’t use may head very well.
I had a friend named Jonathan who clearly stood out as a foreigner in Yemen with his bleach-blond hair and pale white skin. His mother was a fiery Irish woman who shouted things that sounded very strange to me. One day when I was playing over at Jonathan’s house, his mom yelled out, “Shut up! and eat your bloody dinner.” That was shocking to me on several levels. First of all, why would you want to eat bloody food? And as a kid, in my home, no one ever told anyone to “Shut up!”
Like most houses in Sana’a, circling Jonathan’s house was a 12-foot tall mud brick wall with shards of glass sticking out on top. Looking back now as an adult, I presume the glass was there to keep unwanted guests out. The wall created a private courtyard for playing, gardening and family times. On this particular day Jonathan and I ventured outside the walls. Inspired partly by childlike creativity, partly by peer pressure and partly by pure naïveté, we conjured up an idea. We decided to collect all the glass shards, make a long mound of dirt running the width of the road and place the glass shards straight up, poking out of the mound. Just as we were halfway through our focused creation, a loud honk of a car horn bellowed from behind us. Our reflexes told us to jump up and get out of the way quickly so we would not get run over. We did not think to say anything to the Yemeni man driving the car, who yelled out at us as he passed by, “Ma Feesh Mokh” in Arabic, which roughly translated means, “You have no brains.” And then, POW! His tire hit the glass shards and exploded. We were in shock and all we could think of was to make a run for it.
Evidently, the driver who was faster than we were, jumped out of his vehicle and chased us down as we tried foolishly to escape into Jonathan’s courtyard. The scene of the crime happening to be right in front of his house. We were doomed. The Yemeni man knocked hard on the door. He was furious and demanded justice. My mom who was inside visiting with Jonathan’s mom somehow with very limited Arabic skills got the angry driver to calm down. As a consequence, and the right thing to do, my mom forced me to apologize to the man and then the two moms negotiated a price to replace his exploded tire, which came out to be around $33. That was a lot of money for a 6 year old in any country!
I felt ashamed and embarrassed in front of my friend. I had shamed my parents in front of the Yemeni man, and I had offended the driver not long after arriving in his home country. Not a very good thing to do as a new guest in a foreign land.
My mom recounted the event in her memoirs: “I wonder why things like this have to happen. I just hope Stephen will learn the proper lesson from it. He was spanked hard, and will have to give us the Yemeni Riyals that he has been saving to help pay for it. He is pretty repentant, and I feel sorry for him, but he has to learn.”
As I reflect back on that childhood incident today, I am glad I got caught. It was a pivotal life moment. I learned that it is not good to succumb to peer pressure. I learned that it is good to think before I act. I learned it is good to apologize when I do something hurtful or offensive to others. I learned that there are consequences for my actions and that I am responsible for them. It’s memories like this one that inextricably tie me to Yemen. Yemen is where my mom and dad taught me this key lesson in responsibility that day that I will never forget. And I am forever grateful for good parents who taught me life lessons as a boy and also modeled for me how to parent my own children. As I raise my own three children and pray for them, I pray to God that when they make a bad choice in life, and all kids do, that they will get caught just like I did, and that they too will learn some pivotal life lessons that will shape their characters into honorable, responsible, respectful adults.
TO BE CONTINUED…
