institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of
Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugarplantations.

We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my

two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town

to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an

all-day conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was

going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she

needed and, since I had all day in town, my father asked me
to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the

car serviced.

When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, “I will

meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together.”

After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to

the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John

Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30

before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and

got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for
me, it was almost 6:00.

He anxiously asked me, “Why were you late?”

I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne

western movie that I said, “The car wasn’t ready, so I had

to wait,” not realizing that he had already called the

garage.

When he caught me in the lie, he said: “There’s something

wrong in the way I brought you up that didn’t give you
the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out

where I went wrong with you, I’m going to walk home 18 miles

and think about it.”

So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk

home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads.

I couldn’t leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove

behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a

stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I

was never going to lie again. I often think about that

episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish
our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all.

I don’t think so. I would have suffered the punishment and

gone on doing the same thing. But this single non-violent

action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened