As a kid, have you ever gotten away with yelling at an adult?

And survived? I did, twice.

I was responsible for getting my two little sisters safely on the school bus after school. One day they never got on the bus. I was utterly beside myself, scared shitless. I was in 4th grade. When I got home no one was home. I frantically called the school because I didn’t know who else to call.
Turns out Mom had picked the little kids up for a dentist appointment and didn’t bother to tell me. I’m pretty sure I yelled at my Mom when she got home and didn’t even get in trouble for it! I was SO scared.

The 2nd time our neighbor’s had a pen full of little white puppies in their front yard. I was about…10. My sister was 7. Suddenly one of the puppies was writhing grotesquely with a broken neck, and then it died.
My sister cried that she didn’t do it, she didn’t do it.
Just then the neighbor lady came out and accused my sister of hopping over the pen and landing on one of the puppies.
I became enraged and snarled, “If she said she didn’t do it, she didn’t do it!!” I was amazed that my neighbor lady didn’t respond to me or trying to hang me from the nearest tree.
I thought about that incident a lot over the years, and finally came to the realization that, in fact, my sister HAD done it, albeit accidentally. It was the only thing that made sense.
In 2006, at my wedding reception, out of the blue, my sister confessed that she had done it. She was pretending to high jump, and did a scissor kick into the pen.
I put my arms around her and said, “I know. I’ve known for a long, long time. How horrible that must have been for you.”