One significant event in this short story is the moment when Lizabeth and Joey, and three or four other children, decide to visit Miss Lottie's house, for the sole purpose of annoying her for their own amusement. The children, hiding in the bushes, decide to throw stones at Miss Lottie's marigolds, beheading them one by one. Miss Lottie is of course enraged, and Lizabeth, "mad with the power of inciting such rage," decides to run out of the bushes and call Miss Lottie an "Old witch." This is a significant event in the story because it gives us an insight into the child that Lizabeth used to be.

A second significant event in the story is when Lizabeth and Joey's father cries "loudly and painfully, and...helplessly and hopelessly in the dark night." Lizabeth and Joey's father cries because he is unable to find a job and earn money. He feels useless and guilty for eating food bought entirely by his wife's income. This is a significant event because the father, who had previously been "the rock on which the family had been built," is now reduced to "sobbing like the tiniest child." This is also a significant moment because it shows what poverty can do to a person.

A third significant event in this story is when Lizabeth returns to Miss Lottie's house and decides to destroy all of Miss Lottie's marigolds. She leaps "furiously into the mounds of marigolds" and tramples, pulls, and mangles the flowers. Then she sees Miss Lottie, and this is the moment, according to Lizabeth, "when childhood faded and womanhood began." At this moment, Lizabeth sees Miss Lottie not as a witch but as "only a broken old woman." This moment of empathy is significant because it marks the end of Lizabeth's childhood and the beginning of her adulthood.