Is confessing to an crime you're not guilty of still good for the soul?

Okay, Blogger surrendered and let me upload a picture of me and my grandma.

I've just gotten home from visiting my parents and my grandmother and enjoying the warmer North Carolina weather. It may take me a few days to catch up with things as I will be busy catching up around here.

While I was at my grandmothers, I thought about this incident and wrote the following. I still didn't tell her the truth. Enjoy...

“Did you cut one, Sage?”

“What?” I shout back while thinking “Did my grandmother ask what I thought she asked?”

“Did you cut one?”

She never spoke so crudely before; she’s sounding like a seventh grade boy. Why was she asking if I’d farted? And how could she even tell, she’s on the other side of the tree?

“Yes, a little one,” I say, my face red with shame.

“Don’t be doing that,” she said. “Put your knife up. These aren’t our peaches; they don’t belong to us until we pay for them.”

“That’s why she’s talking about,” I think to myself. “How do I get out of this situation?”

Grandma’s a literalist. She thought I had cut a peach with my knife and I was thinking like a Junior High boy. I’m thirteen years old and spending a week with my grandparents. Most evenings I’d been out fishing with my granddad, but this evening the three of us are over to J. B. Coles’ orchard over near West End picking peaches. Cole has the big “redskin” peaches. They’re so juicy that when you bit into one, peach juice runs down your chin. I am careful when putting them into the baskets, making sure they’re not bruised. After picking several bushels, we pay the man at the shed out by the road and drive home. That night before bed we have fresh peaches over angel food cake, topped with whipped cream. The next morning we have peaches in our cereal. A few peaches are saved for a container of home made ice cream to be fixed on Sunday afternoon, but most of them my grandmother cans in quart Mason Jars, saving them for cobblers she’ll make on wintry afternoons.

It’s said that confession is good for the soul. I’m not sure that includes confessing for transgressions not committed, but since I’m sure there are a few misdemeanors I’ve overlooked, confessing for this one transgression didn’t do me any harm. I never told my grandma that I confused cutting a peach with passing gas and there is no reason to bring it up now, decades later.