Dumb Shit I Did

The earliest memory I have of being stupid involved turning a bicycle over onto its seat and handlebars and pumping the pedal to spin the wheel. Did you ever do that as a kid? Well, I had it going really fast, and the spokes became invisible. Something, probably being descended from my dad, prompted me to stick my right index finger in. THWACK-SPURT. I cut my finger down to the bone. My father asked me what I was thinking. I'd have the chance to ask him that exact same question a few years later.

Our neighbors across the street had been painting the house with white latex based paint. They had paint trays in their garage on a shelf with paint congealing in them. For some reason I rounded up every kid about my age on our street and we decided to paint each other with it. I got the worst of it. It was all over my face and in my hair. And my dad took a rag soaked in turpentine to me to get it off. God that shit burned. I was crying. We all got grounded. Every single one of us. And having been the ringleader, I got a spanking.

My dad used to snag refrigerator boxes from the hardware store for me to play with. I figured out if you got inside of it at the top of the front steps on my porch and had someone else push it over you could roll down the steps in it without getting scraped up. So we did that. A lot.

We had a crabapple tree in the side yard that I used to climb almost every day. And one day I climbed it and the limb I was on broke out from under me and I threw myself against the tree and clung on like a lemur. And yelled for dad. Over and over again. I don't know if he hadn't heard me or was just screwing with me, but I hung on for over 15 minutes. And he had to climb the tree to get me back down.

I had a 3 speed purple bike with a banana seat and hand brakes. Our street was a hill leading down to an intersection that led to the crick. And one day I was riding my bike downhill and hit the hand brakes as hard as I could, and I flipped over the handlebars and landed on my back in the street in front of my bike. RIGHT in front of Johnny Palin. Who was my arch-nemesis.

I was over my friend's house swimming one day and I decided to do a back flip off the board. So I bounced a few times and leaped backwards. And slammed my spine into the board, knocking the air out of me, and slipped into the deep end. She jumped in and dragged me out. I should thank her for that again.

There's a whole list from the adult years as well. But I think this is enough for now.