（This is a true story – the names have been changed to protect the guilty）
(1)
It’s almost 10 on Saturday morning!
Gloria reluctantly put her iPhone away and quickly jumped out of bed. It’s time to do her important Saturday job – laundry!
Gloria had taken a voluntary redundancy from work and retired four years ago. Since then, she has been voluntarily doing three families’ laundry every Saturday – her own family, her parents who live next door, and her uncle who has been single for his whole life – 94 years – and lives in the Anglican Retirement Village. Everyone expects their fresh and clean clothes will be ready by Monday, which makes Gloria feel good.
Within no time, Gloria has collected all the dirty clothes and put them in the laundry. While she is starting to sort them into dark and light colours, she found something missing: her sixteen years old son Jack’s dirty white long sleeve underwear that he has been wearing all week.
Jack missed out on the previous week’s laundry as he forgot to change his dirty underwear on Friday night, so that dirty underwear is still in his laundry bucket. If he misses out on washing his underwear this week, he might end up with nothing clean to change into.
Instantly, Gloria runs upstairs and knocks on Jack’s bedroom door.
“Morning, baby! You forgot to change your underwear last night. Please change it now before I start running the washing machine, OK?” Gloria said nicely.
“Oh…” Obviously Jack is still in bed sleeping.
Gloria then turns around, goes downstairs to continue sorting out the rest of the dirty clothes. Once finished with the sorting, Gloria runs upstairs again, to check if Jack has put his dirty underwear out his bedroom door, but nothing is there!
“Jack,” Gloria shouts over his door. “Please change your underwear now. So I can start the washing machine.”
“O…K…” Jack answers sleepily.
Gloria waits for a few minutes outside his door, but nothing is being thrown out. It’s nearly 11 o’clock! There is so much to do. So Gloria runs downstairs to finish off pre-treatment and hand washes some clothes. Once again, she shouts up the stairway, “Jack, change your underwear NOW!”
No response.
Can’t wait any longer, so Gloria decides to load the dark-coloured clothes into the washing machine and turns it on. When the first load of clothes is finished, it’s nearly midday.
Gloria takes the clean clothes out and puts the rest of the light-coloured clothes into the washing machine. Before starting the machine, again, she runs upstairs to check if Jack has put his underwear outside his bedroom door, but nothing is there!
“Jack!” Gloria starts pounding his bedroom door with her fist and shouts very loudly, “Give me your underwear NOW!”
“WAA…” BANG! BANG!
Suddenly, Jack shouts out like an angry lion, storms out of his bedroom, bangs his door closed, runs aimlessly towards the door of the master bedroom, trips on the foot of the sofa, falls down with his back in a gap between the single and double sofa, and moans, “Arrr… I need to fix my door.”
“What? Why?” Gloria asks.
“I punched a hole in the door.” Jack confesses sadly.
“Haha…” Gloria starts to laugh. It reminds her of a similar incident that happened in the family.
“Stop laughing!” Jack shouts out with a very straight face. Obviously he knows what Gloria’s laughing about.
Instantly, Gloria swallows her laughter.
“I just want your dirty underwear,” Gloria says firmly.
Jack goes back to his bedroom, changes his underwear and throws it to Gloria, and then closes his bedroom door.
(2)
It was thirteen years ago, when daughter Katie was sixteen years old…
One day, there was a disagreement that happened between mother and daughter. Katie shouted very loudly and ran into a downstairs bathroom angrily, but a second later she called out to Mum in her normal tone, “Mum, come.”
Gloria went downstairs wondering why Katie called. Katie closed the bathroom door to show her. There it was – a big hole on the inside of the door.
“Sorry, Mum! I punched it and it broke.” Katie admitted her fault timidly.
“Wow, that iron fist of yours!” Gloria responded.
Once Katie made sure she was out of trouble, she seemed to have forgotten how and when to fix the hole problem, so that hole in the door stayed untouched for over nine years!
Jack had known about the hole on the inside of the downstairs bathroom ever since he was a baby.
Till one day, the hole was filled with blue Builder’s Bog……
In 2011, after Katie completed her five years of study at Macquarie University and Sydney University, “I’ve done my duty,” she declared happily to her parents, “now I’m free to start my adventure.” So she went to the USA with a one-year working visa initially, but she has been living over there ever since.
In 2014, at one of Katie’s visits back home during Christmas time, she met her ex-boyfriend carpenter, Kay.
One day, they drove Gloria’s car and went out surfing at Manly beach. After finishing for the day, when they were loading everything into the car, to get his hands free, Kay simply put Katie’s handbag onto the roof of the car, just temporarily as he thought, but he forgot about it. When Katie was looking for her handbag, they had already been driving for about five minutes. Instantly they went back, and found Katie’s handbag lying in the middle of the road, where it had been run over by cars several times. Inside of the handbag, Gloria’s car keys were smashed and broken.
When Gloria saw her destroyed car keys, she was very upset! To amend his mistake, Kay recalled that Gloria asked him before about how to fix the hole on the downstairs bathroom’s door. Without asking, Kay came back and filled up the hole with blue Builder’s Bog. He was planning, after the Builder’s Bog dried out, to bring an electrical sander back and smooth the area. Unfortunately, Kay never had another chance to show up in that house, as Katie and Kay went their separate ways straight afterwards, and the hole sealed with blue Builder’s Bog, seemed to be left and ‘forgotten’ once again.
Therefore, the downstairs bathroom door has stayed looking like the picture above for another four years till now. Everyone in the house was aware of that.
(3)
When Gloria finished her Saturday laundry job, it was after 12:30pm. It’s time to cook Jack’s lunch.
As usual, Gloria runs upstairs, attempts to ask Jack what he wants to eat. To her surprise, Jack’s bedroom door is wide open, but Jack, still in his pyjamas, is nowhere to be seen!
Gloria has checked upstairs, downstairs, all of bathrooms, bedrooms, front yard and backyard, she calls him out loudly, and still she can’t find him anywhere.
Suddenly, Jack appears at the front door.
“Where were you?” Gloria says with relief.
“Garage,” he replies. “Where is the nearest Bunnings?”
“On Showground Road,” Gloria answers with wonder. “Why?”
“I want to fix my door,” Jack says firmly. “I Googled it. I need to buy a few items.”
“Okay.” Gloria is pleased to hear it, but suggests, “Could you have your lunch first before we go? “
“No, I’m not hungry,” Jack says sadly. “I’d like to go now.” He looks at Gloria tentatively.
“Alright. How about letting me have my lunch while you’re getting out of your PJs?”
Jack says nothing. He runs upstairs into his bedroom to get changed straightaway.
In the local Bunnings store, by following Jack’s shopping list, they find all of what Jack needs, and Gloria also wants a garden fork that is needed to use for her composting bin.
While they queue up at the cashier, Jack quickly takes out a $100 dollar note from his pocket. Gloria recognizes the money was his pocket money savings.
“I will pay.” Jack says to Gloria.
“Are you sure?” Gloria is surprised.
“Yes.” Jack answers firmly.
“How about my garden fork?”
“Well, it’s less than 10 bucks. I will pay for them all.”
“Thanks!” Gloria is very pleased and moved.
So Jack bought all of the items below except a knife, a spoon and a black plastic bowl：
Once they returned home and Jack had his brunch, he then disappeared into his bedroom and started his repair project for the rest of the weekend…
(4)
Luckily, Paul was called to help his mother at his parents’ house on Saturday. He left the house early in the morning, didn’t come back home until dinner time. Thus he missed out on the whole thing. As Jack’s reaction to amend his mistake was so sincere, which totally melted Gloria’s heart, she wasn’t planning to mention the incident to her husband either.
Till on Sunday afternoon, when Paul went upstairs for something, Jack was in the bathroom at that moment, he left his bedroom door wide open with newspapers spread under the door across the carpet. Paul noticed the abnormality and curiously went inside his bedroom, then he saw it.
Instantly, Paul goes downstairs and asks Gloria, “When was Jack’s door smashed?”
Gloria smiles. She briefly tells him the incident happened on Saturday.
“Haha… poor doors!” Paul laughs.
“So, may I ask you a favour?” Gloria takes the opportunity and asks him: “Could you please
use Jack’s sandpaper to sand the downstairs bathroom door? After the doors are sanded smoothly, I will paint them during weekdays while you both are out of the house,” Gloria promises.
“OK,” Paul happily agrees and starts the job for the rest of afternoon.
(5)
While waiting for father and son to finish their sanding jobs, as usual, to include Katie in the loop of the family, Gloria picks up her iPhone, opens Viber, starts writing a series of ‘Jack’s Story’ recounting what happened on Saturday to Katie.
At the end of part 2 in ‘Jack’s Story’, Gloria wrote:
“You know, everybody can have a moment of anger and short temper, but to fix errors promptly and with sincerity afterwards, all will definitely be forgiven. I have to admit it, I wouldn’t be able to amend my mistakes as good as Jack did. For that, I’ve learnt something good from Jack.”
Katie responded instantly.
“Awww mum!!! Love ❤ our sweet boy!!! That definitely made me laugh too. Oh, he’s a better boy than me that’s for sure! Such a big heart and sweet soul.
You’re such a great Mum.
I hope I have you to laugh with when I have my teenagers.
Thank you for sharing that story with me!
Really warmed my heart.
Aww so sweet.
Haha, keep me updated.
……”
(6)
As the job progressed, Gloria continued writing to Katie and sending more photos.
“Last Saturday night, after 10pm, I was in bed and about to sleep when Jack called me to come. So I went in his bedroom, where the door was sanded very smoothly, only there were a few tiny air bubbles. I said it’s good enough, but Jack wasn’t satisfied with the quality. He wanted to do a second filling job. The photo shows his second application of Builder’s Bog.”
“Here is the finished sandpaper job done by Jack. Very smooth! Which has made Paul feel ashamed about his job on the downstairs bathroom door. He is planning to do a bit more sanding before painting.”
Paul’s first sanding job.
Paul’s second sanding job.
“After Jack and Paul completed their sanding jobs on the two doors, I stepped in to do the last job – painting.
Da da…”
Jack’s inside door with first coat.
Jack’s inside door with second coat.
Jack’s inside door from a distance.
Downstairs bathroom door with first coat.
Downstairs bathroom door with second coat.
Downstairs bathroom door from a distance.
At the end of Jack’s story, Gloria wrote to Katie:
“This was the very first door painting job I’ve done in my life. It isn’t perfect and doesn’t look as professional, but I’m happy with the job.
So the doors’ story has concluded with a happy ending due to a great team work from our family. We all contributed to the job, and we’re all proud of it.”
Katie replied:
“Wow!!!! Great work looks like brand new doors!!!! Amazing!!
Great family team work!”
Paul and Gloria looked the doors, admired their jobs and laughed to each other:
“Lucky that we have two children only. Doors aren’t punching bags, are they?”
— End —
