The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55886 Message #871318
Posted By: Rapparee
21-Jan-03 - 07:35 AM
Thread Name: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
Subject: RE: BS: Weird things you did when you were a kid
One Fourth of July my brother Tony collected all of the unexploded firecrackers, fountains, and other fireworks he could find. Cut 'em open and put all of the powder into an alumininum bowl. He must have had a pound of it (half a kilo, for those who use metric). He was sitting on the front porch with the bowl between his legs when he accidentally dropped a hot ash into it.... The resulting flash cost him his eyebrows and half the hair on his head, burnt holes in his clothes, and if he hadn't worn glasses, probably would have cost his eyesight. "Powder burns" doesn't begin to describe his condition, either.
Mom went into church one Saturday afternoon, Tony and I played "Follow The Leader" in the asphalted playground. The game went well, until he decided to be the leader and jump through moving swings. Mom came out of church as I was trying to stop the blood cascading down his face from the cut on his forehead. That got him back to the emergency room....
When I was about 4 I locked my father and mother out of the house and was so afraid of punishment that I didn't let them in. Until...my father appeared behind me! He'd climbed a ladder and entered through a second (British first) floor window....
Forts. My brothers and I started digging with spoons in a lot behind our house. A neighbor came over to help, then we got shovels.... Two weeks later we had "Deep Fort" -- an L-shaped excavation about six feet deep. This isn't much, except that we lived on "filled land" (an old dump) and we had to remove A LOT of scrap. One was the entire roof to a model T Ford car. Deep Fort existed, of course, because it was a hole, and holes "are their own excuse for being."
The beat goes on: Tony bought a blowgun -- the kind that shoots darts -- a year ago Christmas. His youngest son, age 7 then, shot him in the butt with a dart....