Looking back…

You know, I was telling some stories with some friends the other night and I got to realizing that it really is amazing that I turned out as well as I did and that I am still alive for that matter. Not that I lived in a war zone or anything like that, that would be understandable. I am just talking about the dumb shit me and my friends have done through the years.

We go to talking about things that we did as children that we would never let our children do and I had so many stories that I started to write them down. I don’t know how many of them I will get to tonight but there could be a series of stories to follow.

One of the first dumb things I can remember is making the slip and slide almighty. We, like just about every kid, had a slip and slide growing up. But we had a pretty good sized yard and we lived on a hill. It did not take long to realize that this store bought slip and slide was not going to cut it. Being either adventurous, or creative, or maybe we were just fucking stupid, my brother and I remembered seeing a large roll of plastic sheeting that my father had in the basement for god only knows what reason. Slip and slide is a sheet of plastic, we got a whole roll of that stuff, lets make a better one! Yeah, first mistake. So we roll this plastic sheeting just about the length of the front yard, get out the water hose and let the good times roll. After several runs it soon came to our attention that this was no where near fast enough. When it hit me, I remember washing the car with some laundry detergent, it is really slippery. Mistake numero dos. At that age I had know idea what the words “use sparingly” meant. Hell, I am pretty sure I didn’t know “sparingly” was a word. So we COVERED the plastic with powered tide laundry detergent. Crash Test Dummy #1 is up and will be at full speed in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Here we go! Oh man this is much better. Oh hell, that fence is coming up fas… BAM! Shit, that hurt. We need to move the slip and slide back. Only problem is that we cut the plastic sheeting to length and if we move it back, it will go over the driveway that splits the front yard. Well, it’s not like we are going to land on the drive way we will simply be sliding OVER it. Ewww, strike three. We strategically place the slip and slide of death in the middle of the yard. Equal running and stopping room. Seems that we have drawn a crowd of neighborhood kids by this time. Never letting an audience get in the way of progress my brother decided that we have worked enough of the kinks out and he wanted to see if he could hit mach 1 himself. He starts to haul ass down the hill and just about the time he is going to dive on the slip and slide one of the neighbor kids start to try to jump over it. Public Safety Announcement, if you are running at full speed onto a piece of wet, soapy sheet of plastic, don’t try to stop. Once you have committed to the act, just follow it through to the end no matter what. In an effort to avoid doing his best impression of Cornelius Bennett hitting Steve Beuerlein, my brother tried to stop. Remember that part about sliding over the drive way? Yeah, that didn’t even come close to happening. He started to slide, tried to stop, ended up off the slip and slide, onto the drive way and catching traction and breaking his ankle. The funny part of the story is, he told me not to tell mom. Like she’s not going to thing something is up when you are crawling around the house with your ankle looking like a purple and black watermelon? Pretty sure she wont have to be Columbo to figure that one out. But what in the hell were we thinking? This isn’t dangerous enough! We need more trips to the ER. Nothing says summer like plaster of paris.

More stories to follow.