Sometimes it’s extremely hard for children to listen to their parents--or their spontaneous ideas get the best of them. I had a first-hand experience in a situation like that, and I still bear the marks to prove it.
   It all happened when I was 5 years old when I was getting ready for school. It was early morning in the middle of spring, and I was sitting on the edge of my mom’s bed in her room in my candy-patterned pajamas while waiting for her to finish ironing my school uniform. The bed was soft and especially comfortable that day. It was calm and quiet, and it felt as if nothing could disrupt the feeling of peace that permeated the air. In the pink-walled room across the hallway, I could hear my older sisters getting ready as well, their low whispers humming like a beehive.
   When my mom was done ironing my uniform, she put the iron aside by the bed. “Don’t move around on the bed or you might knock the iron over,” she told me, her voice stern, yet still tender. “I don’t want anything to get burned.”
   “Okay, okay, Mom. I won’t,” I mumbled in reply. I--being the disobedient child I was--didn’t plan on listening to her. I knew something would go wrong if I moved, but I didn’t stop myself and started bouncing around on the bed anyway.
   As the iron inevitably fell over, my vision faltered, everything plunging into slow motion. I watched the iron fall straight towards my lap, the silver of the metal flashing in the light of the lamp, and winced, helpless to stop it, too slow to move. The steaming iron burnt my legs right by my knees, but I didn’t feel any pain from it.
   My mom immediately started yelling, her short, dark hair flying as she ran toward me, shouting, “Why did you move?! I specifically told you not to!”
  “I didn’t- it wasn’t-” I stuttered.
   Trying to come up with a quick excuse, I decided to blame my oldest sister who had come in only moments before; the fact that she was also standing by the iron gave enough evidence for my 5-year-old brain to try to convince my parents that it wasn’t my fault.
   Without taking any more time to see if my idea would actually work, I blurted, “Rachel! Why did you knock it over?”
   “What do you mean?” she demanded. “I didn’t knock it over, you did! You were sitting right next to it!” Her expression, filled with indignation and anger over my betrayal, is one I’ll always see on her brown-eyed, dark hair-framed face.
   Playing it off didn’t work, sadly, and I left my parents’ room with a burn on my legs and wounded pride. I could feel my parents and siblings, with my other sister who had also come into the room, looking at me as I sheepishly shuffled back to my room. I could hear them arguing over who knocked the iron over and whether I should get in trouble if it was me who did it. Even half-dressed in pajamas and work clothes, my dad’s voice sounded with authority over everyone else’s.
   As the argument slowly cooled down, I sat alone in my room next door, staring uncomprehendingly at the folds in the fuchsia-colored blanket, pink, blue, white, and green butterflies swirling around, seemingly having a much better time than I was. The walls in my room, alternately a bright green and yellow, reflected the complete opposite of what I felt. I didn’t feel cheerful or bright; my cheeks still stung with embarrassment, but I was more upset over the fact that no one believed my lie and that I still had to go to school.
   Eventually, the burn, and with it all the commotion, started fading away, but it left behind a few scars. Two small, round scars of a darker color than the rest of my skin now sit on my left leg by my knee, and another one stretches 3-4 inches from the knee on my right leg and extends over to the outside edge of my thigh.
   The story “No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” has a lot more meaning to me than it did before. It no longer seems like something to laugh about as a child, but when I think about it now, it seems to be something to be learned early on before ignorance becomes the cause of regret--such as the case of what happened to me.