The grandchildren had just walked back into the house from the neighbor’s pool. Bundled in fluffy towels, the grandchildren wandered around the house, grabbing clothes, and taking turns dressing in the bathroom. Damp hair and mismatched outfits clothed the grandchildren as they gathered back in the living room. The television was turned on as the old man sat down in his recliner. All eyes turned to him as he asked if anyone would like to hear a story about a family secret.
The six grandchildren gathered closer to hear the story. Once settled on the living room floor the grandchildren focused on the balding man dressed in a maroon hoodie, grey sweatpants, fluffy socks, and loafers. A Looney Tunes cartoon was playing on the television screen, but all eyes were focused on the old man. His name was Anthony “Tony” Barrera Sr., a man of many stories according to his grandchildren and many tall tales according to their parents.
Tony’s mother, a small and frail old lady with bright curly red hair dressed in a fluffy purple robe and cat slippers walked around the room passing out little flower cookies and SunnyD bottles to each of the grandchildren. The grandchildren eagerly took the offered treats and thanked their Nana as she made sure they all had their share. Once all the children were fed, she sat down in her pink rocking chair to listen to the story alongside them with a reminiscent expression adorning her face.
The stories Tony had told his grandchildren before ranged from his own past to stories he made up to entertain them. This story was from his time as a boy in Crawley, England, before his parents remarried and moved back to Corpus Christi, Texas. This story took place while he was enrolled at a school taught solely by Catholic nuns for his secondary education. Both girls and boys were enrolled at the school.
It had all started on a day when the boy’s restroom was unavailable for use due to repairs, so Tony and the other boys had permission to use the girl’s restroom until repairs were completed. Upon entering the girl’s restroom to use the facilities, Tony noticed something about the girls’ restroom that was different from the boy’s restroom. The girls’ restroom had doors on the toilet stalls. After taking care of business, Tony went to the principal’s office instead of class to make a complaint. The principal was Sister Gertrude, a grouchy old nun who disliked Tony for various reasons including pranks and attitude. Her frown grew sour as she looked up to see Tony walk through her door and soured further when he asked why the boy’s restroom did not have any toilet stall doors.
“Boys don’t need stall doors,” Sister Gertrude replied dismissively and turned her attention back to the papers on her desk.
Tony argued that such an idea was not fair and insisted that the boys’ restroom needed to get doors on the toilet stalls. Sister Gertrude insisted that there was no need, and that the idea was ludicrous. Tony tried once more to appeal for the boys to get stall doors later that day, but Sister Gertrude refused to hear any more on the subject and sent him back to class.
The next day at school, there were screams coming from the girl’s bathroom and Sister Gertrude was called to see what the ruckus was about. When she and the other nuns entered the girl’s restroom, they found that all the toilet stall doors were missing. Sister Gertrude at once suspected Tony to be the culprit, since he was the only one who had complained about not having stall doors in the boy’s restroom. She checked to see if the doors had been moved to the toilet stalls in the boy’s restroom, but they were not there. She called Tony into her office upon his arrival for the day and demanded that he return the doors. Tony denied taking the doors, so Sister Gertrude demanded to search his house. Tony’s family did not oppose the search and welcomed the congregation of nuns into the house, garage, and yard to search.
Sister Gertrude and other nuns searched all over the house but could not find any sign of the doors. With no success in tracking down the existing doors at the school or Tony’s house, new doors were ordered and installed in the girl’s restroom but not in the boy’s restroom. The day following the installation of the new toilet stall doors, the new stall doors were missing as well. Sister Gertrude once again suspected Tony of having taken the doors, but he once again denied the accusation. When another search of the house found no sign of the doors, new doors were ordered and installed solely in the girl’s restroom. Just as was the case the first two times, these new doors went missing in the dead of night.
Sister Gertrude accused Tony of stealing the doors a third time, but no evidence could prove this claim. Searching the house resulted in wasted time since the doors could not be found there. The toilet stall doors were nowhere to be found. When the new set of stall doors were ordered, Sister Gertrude added extra to the order than before. The first doors installed were in the boys’ restroom, followed by the girls’ restroom. Tony neither said nor did anything the first day that doors were on the boys’ toilet stalls and none of the stall doors were removed from the girl’s restroom again. The following day of the new stall door instillation, Sister Gertrude walked into her office to find every single one of the missing toilet stall doors stacked on her desk alongside a note that read “that wasn’t so hard.”
Sister Gertrude demanded that Tony admit he was the one who took and hid the doors, but he refused to admit anything. With no proof that he was the culprit she was not able to reprimand him. She had been correct that Tony had been the culprit, and he was proud of the fact that she was never proven correct. The family secret Tony revealed was not that it had been him who stole and hid the toilet stall doors from the girls’ restroom. The secret was where the doors had been hidden.
Each time that the doors had gone missing, Tony had snuck into the girls’ restroom at night, unscrewed each door from the hinges, and brought them back to his house. The reason the doors were never found each time Sister Gertrude and the other nuns searched the house was because the nuns were looking in the wrong place. The doors had been stashed up inside the roof of the garage of the house, where no one had checked. Tony’s family knew this, but no one snitched on him to the nuns leading the story to become a family secret.
“Why did no one snitch on you, grandpa?” the youngest granddaughter asked.
“We agreed with him that the situation was unfair,” Nana spoke up. “When something is unfair, you must fix it. Tony’s actions were justified and got the result he wanted.”