When I was about ten years old, my brother and I received a wonderful gift — tennis rackets and balls. We had never had the opportunity to play tennis, so this was exciting. However, there was one problem — the small town we lived in did not have a tennis court.

One Sunday morning my brother said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s take our tennis rackets and balls to the school and hit the balls against the school building.”

“Great idea! Let’s go,” I agreed, not realizing what a lesson we would learn before the experience was over.

When we got to the school ground, no one was around, so we began hitting our balls against the side of the two-story brick building.

“I’ll hit it the first time,” my brother suggested, “then you hit it the next time. We’ll hit it back and forth to each other.”

So we began taking turns hitting the ball, getting more confident with each stroke. Actually, we became pretty good at returning the ball and we were hitting the ball higher and faster each time.

Suddenly, the unthinkable happened — the ball got out of control and went crashing through one of the upstairs windows.

We looked around and no one was in sight — except there was an old man stting on a porch halfway down the block.

Quietly, I asked, “Now what should we do? Our ball is inside the school.”

“Well,” my brother responded, “no one will know whose ball it is. And no one saw us, except that old man down there. And he probably can’t see this far.”

“He probably doesn’t know who we are anyway,” I added.

“Let’s go home,” my brother suggested.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Should we tell Mom and Dad?”

“I don’t know,” my brother answered.

Then we picked up the rest of our balls and headed for home, keeping silent all the way with our heads drooping.