The First Day of Sixth Grade

There are several reasons why I remember the first day of sixth grade. It all started in the morning when we were getting ready for the all important first day of school. Andy was starting 9th grade and he believed himself to be the hottest thing since indoor plumbing. He ended up spending way too much time on the little curl on his hair that made him look like Lucille Ball to everyone else. Then he used makeup to cover up some of the bigger white heads on his face which had been hit with a plague straight out of the Bible. His head may have looked funny, but his pants put all other funny looking things to shame. They were made of shinny polyester and they hugged his legs so tight that Michael Jackson would have turned his head in shame. Andy was at the peak of puberty and to this day I have not had the pleasure of having a normal conversation with my older brother as it has been his misfortune to continue puberty well into his 30’s.
I arrived at school and heard an announcement that I knew would change my life forever. This year the school would have a student body president and a student council. I was going to be the president. I always knew that I was destined for glory, and this was my chance to prove it. Everything that had happened from the moment of my birth had prepared me to be the student body president of my elementary school.
“Did you hear that?” I asked my friend John who sat next to me. “I am going to be the president.”
“That’s awesome man.”
“I knew it,” I thought to myself, “everyone is expecting me to be their leader.”
The rest of the morning I sat in my seat smiling uncontrollably and planning my campaign strategy in my head. I was focused and nothing could distract me. Throughout the school day I was on cloud nine and I had fun doing everything. I sat at a table of boys and just before lunch we were hungry and getting a little rowdy. While I was laughing at a blond joke I let things get out of hand and before I knew it the pressure got to me and I made an unexpected loud noise. There was no denying this embarrassment so I just joined in with everyone else and laughed even louder.
“What’s going on!” Mrs. Jones demanded.
The kids all pointed to me.
“Bryan I want you back here for recess, you can sit with your head down and think about how you are not going to interrupt our class for the rest of the day.”
This wasn’t the best way to get on good terms with my new teacher, but I didn’t care I was going to be student body president, nothing could phase me at this point in my illustrious career, I am sure my teacher thought that I was on something as I sat there and just smiled like I didn’t have a care in the world.
After lunch one of my friends pulled out some seeds from some kind of pepper.
“Look at this guys,” John said showing us his treasure. He then proceeded to pass out seeds to our entire table.
“Look at me I’m a monster,” I said putting a seed on each of my eyes.
Other boys put the seeds in their noses, tongues and ears. We had a great time for about two minutes. My eyes started to itch and then burn as if someone had lit a fire inside of my head. I looked at my friends and they all had red faces and hands.
Mrs. Jones came over to see what the moaning was coming from our table. When she arrived I can only imagine the pitiful sight she enjoyed. Six boys with swollen red faces and hands moaning and a couple of us were rolling on the floor. She sent us to the bathroom to rinse off, but the pain remained for the rest of the day. I kept reminding myself of my future fame and that helped to ease the pain throughout the day and I sat with my careless smile once again.
The bell sounded and I rushed to the bike rack to find my two younger brothers.
“Alex guess what,” I said to my kindergarten brother.
“What?”
“I am going to be the president!”
“Wow, will you get to move to the White House and eat candy?” Alex was obsessed with candy.
“No bud, but I will be your boss.”
Just then Dallin came running around the corner with his friend Josh.
“Dallin guess what.”
Dallin turned toward me, made a monkey face while his friend flapped his wings like a bird. They both just ran past me and jumped on their bikes.
“I’m telling Mom if you don’t wait up,” I yelled without effect. “Come on Alex, let’s catch him.”
We didn’t catch sight of Dallin until we were almost to our first day of school ice cream party at the church.
“What’s that? Alex asked pointing at something in the road up ahead.
“It’s probably just a dead bird,” I replied.
“But it’s huge,”
“Maybe it’s a dead bear,”
I could tell this scared Alex as his eyes grew about 10 sizes which looked really funny on a little kid with and oversized head and eyes that already looked like they were going to pop out at any moment.
As we approached the dead bear, I could tell that it was actually a couple of kids lying in the road. Alex and I came up to two kids lying on their backs, staring at the sky and crying hysterically.
“Hey Dallin guess what? Sidewalk chalk tastes great. I accidently licked some in class and before I knew it half of my piece was gone.”
“Alex knock it off! Can’t you see that he’s hurt, look at his face it doesn’t have any skin on it.” I gently reprimanded Alex for going off on another tangent.
After trying to get the boys out of the middle of the road I gave up and decided to make a safe barrier around them so they would not get run over by a car. Alex and I broke the reflectors off our bikes and laid them in a circle around the accident. We had plenty of reflectors because my dad always made sure that each bike had at least ten reflectors to make sure we were safe and riding in style at the same time. After we had the accident site secured I turned to Alex.
“Alex you stay here and make sure Dallin doesn’t get run over, I’m going to get Mom.
I rushed home and ran through the door. After I had told my mom the whole story about me being the future president of our school I proceeded to tell on Dallin for running away from me after school. Eventually I got to the fact that my brother was lying in the middle of the street bleeding to death and we ran out the door to save his life.
When we arrived on the seen it looked the same as I had left in, two boys screaming in the middle of the road surrounded by bike reflectors. Alex had wondered off to the gutter and was eating bugs.
“Alex get over here!” Mom yelled.
Alex dropped his next bug and ran over to my mom. “Mom, Mom! Guess what. I ate sidewalk chalk!”
My mom starred at him in horror for a brief second and then focused on the two boys. She picked them up and put them in the back of the car as I gathered the reflectors and Alex chased a butterfly.
“Let’s go,” Mom demanded.
“But what about my ice cream at the church,” I whined.
“Not now Bryan, not now.”
“But…” I stopped as my mom gave me the “I will rip your guts out if you say one more word” look.
We rushed the boys over to the hospital where we all three fought for my mom’s attention. I was trying to tell her about how popular I was and how there was no way that anybody would vote for anybody else, Alex was bragging about his snacks throughout the day, and Dallin was still screaming like a little girl who had just lost her doll.
I never did win the election; the rumor was that the whole election was fixed. I still hang my posters in my living room, knowing that one day my old principal will walk through my door, apologize and beg me to attend our sixth grade reunion as president of my class. Dallin ended up with a permanently scared face which looks like he has had a run in with a blow torch that melted his face off. Alex continues to have GI problems due to his interesting choice in foods. Andy still lives in 9th grade and walks with a noticeable strut. Despite our shortcomings we are still the best of friends and even though we may not be accepted by our neighbors, we respect each other and enjoy getting together to watch Alex eat weird things, and balance couches on his face while Andy shows us his latest basketball hero’s name that he has shaved into the rug of hair on his back.

Playing Baseball

Baseball was usually my sport of choice and from the time that I was three I spent my summers swinging a bat. Andy and I would often have debates on who could hit the ball the farthest; Dad or Mickey Mantle. We usually decided that Dad would probably out slug the famous Yankee Hall of Famer. Dad would take us down to Stoker school to hit us baseballs. The field was only a little larger than a regulation soccer field, so he did not have enough space to hit the balls far, but he did hit them high. In fact, my dad would hit the ball so high that I would always lose sight of it for a few seconds at its peak. One time he got too much ball and the ball soared over buildings and into Main Street, I heard some noises but he told me that it was a bad ball anyway and not to go and look for it. We got pretty good at spotting the balls coming out of the clouds and then catching them. I also learned how to pad my mitt to avoid broken fingers. Before I got good I would also wear a football helmet, shoulder pads and shin guards. All suited up I had no fear, except for when the oversized football helmet spun around and would leave me in the dark for a few scary moments. Once we caught the ball we would throw it toward Dad where Dallin or Alex would act like gophers, shag the balls and hand them back to Dad. I knew that I was well on my way to becoming a professional baseball player, I even had my own baseball card and championship trophy made in preparation for future events.
My dad of course could not always come with us. Most of the time, in fact all summer long, Andy and I and later our other two brothers would head down to Stoker on our own and spend the day playing our own made up versions of a baseball games that could be played with only a couple of people. We would load up the baskets on our bikes with bats, balls, bases, and all sorts of mitts and head down to our home field. One of my favorite games was when I would pretend to be a major league pitcher. My skills were up for the challenge but unfortunately I was too young to actually pitch for a major league club so I settled to pitch 9 full innings to imaginary batters with my older brother catching. Usually I would end up pitching a perfect game striking out all pretend batters who came to the plate. Yes, a few of the batters saved my records of no walks by conveniently calling time outs just before I threw many of the my wild pitches, but in the end I always threw a perfect game without making a single mistake. I was good, and I knew it.
After a year or so of playing all day everyday during the warm summer months Dad decided that the public park needed an upgrade. We spent the next few weeks pulling ivy off the left field fence that acted as a barrier for the people who lived in the apartments next door and relocating loads of sand from the nice city park to make a nice infield for our field. Our project was starting to look much more like a baseball field than a weed patch. I worked hard during those weeks to make that field usable and through our efforts we claimed the public field as our own. I was not very happy those times when some intruder had the audacity to trespass on our field.
One day Andy and I were pretending to have a playoff game. He was always the hitter and he would go through the team’s line up drop hitting me fly balls. I purposely would drop a lot of the balls that were hit by my favorite players, and with my skills I also made some pretty miraculous catches to save the day for our team. In all reality I was my own hero and in some ways I made more miraculous plays than the real player ever did.
“Who’s up?” I yelled to Andy.
“Wade Boggs,” he yelled back.
Wade Boggs was a good player, but he played for the Red Sox and we were not Red Sox fans. Wade hit a fly ball right for me, “Easy out, easy out,” I could hear the crowd cheering in my mind. I knew that all eyes and hopes of the crowd were on me, the self-appointed defensive hero of every game played in Yankee Stadium. I put up my glove and just missed it. The ball ricocheted off my glove and hit me right in the chin. I was hurt, but I was also brave.
I heard Andy yelling, “you can still throw him out!”
I gathered all of my strength, picked up the ball and threw it with all my might toward 1st base (the ball actually went the opposite direction into the road).
“OUT!” Andy screamed.
I was the only right fielder in history to have an arm strong enough to throw out a would be single. With my job done, I collapsed to the ground in obvious pain.
“It was the sun,” I kept whining over and over, “the sun made me drop it.”
“But it’s cloudy out here Bryan there is no sun,” Andy had run out to the outfield to see if I was okay.
“Yea, but it came out just long enough to make me miss that ball.” I said as I stood up ready to go again even though I had to play the rest of the game with the baseball’s thread marks imbedded on my chin.
“Next up, Don Mattingly,” Andy excitedly yelled out.
The bases were loaded and the Yankees were down by three runs. A grand slam here could mean a win for the Yankees. There was a full count, somehow Andy had managed to miss the ball twice and had thrown himself three balls. He hit the next toss and I was about to catch it, but decided to drop it on purpose just outside of the foul line.
“Foul ball!” I yelled.
After three more foul balls and a line drive that did not count because of a rowdy, imaginary fan, Don, finally hit a deep ball (it helped that Andy had scooted up to third base to hit the ball) that went flying over the fence. I ran around the fence to get the ball when I heard the distinct sound of glass breaking. I ran back around the fence even faster. In church teachers frequently give the example of some kid breaking a window with a ball. The honest child always goes, knocks on the door and offers to pay for the broken window. Obviously those teachers have never broken a window before. During the lessons I always gave the right answer, but the sound of broken glass triggered a signal in my brain that said, “RUN!”
I have never moved so fast in my life, Andy and I jumped on our bikes and took off down the street, we jumped off at a nearby church and hid behind a big tree.
“That was an awesome hit,” Andy complimented himself.
“Who cares, we are dead. How are we ever going to pay for a window, not to mention get our ball back?” I hopelessly asked.
We debated for a few minutes and then decided that after a whole 10 minutes, the coast was sure to be clear. That was a nice ball that we had lost, and we had to get it back. Behind the park where we played there was a big apartment complex. We looked through the bushes next to the window where the ball had gone and all we could see was a hole in the window.
“Andy look,” I said pointing at the window.
“Wow, a hole,” Andy replied with his mouth gaping open. “Do you think a rock broke it?
“What’s wrong with you Andy? You broke it!”
Just then I heard a voice behind us say, “Looking for this boys?”
I turned to see a huge man just taller than me in a tight white tank top, glasses, unibrow and a patchy beard that was obviously his pride and joy. He held a burned grilled cheese sandwich and a can of Fresca in one hand and in the other was our ball. He held his prize new ball, taunting us and obviously not planning on giving it back. The kind man, showing off his huge vocabulary of four letter words, then explained to us in a long compound sentence, how we would pay for his window.
We were doomed and we knew it. There was no way that we could tell my dad, he would not be happy. We went straight to Mom and told her what had happened. My mom made us return to the man’s house to apologize and pay him off. When he answered the door the man was not as loud as he had been before, it probably had to do with the fact that my mom’s five foot two figure dwarfed his own five foot frame. My mom made arrangements to pay the man once the window came in and then Andy and I agreed to do the dishes for the rest of our mortal lives.
We ended up breaking another couple of windows over the course our careers, but nothing could ever stop us from playing baseball together. My legacy still lives on at that field, out of respect for my brothers and I the city tore out the baseball diamond a few years back and the field has been retired in our honor.

Parades, Rooftops, and Dead Birds

For many years my dad had decorated our bikes, dressed us up as clowns and entered us in the town parade. We were never official, Dad would just show up and we would sneak in line behind the fire trucks. Although we were not official, we were favorites, one year the newspaper even did a story on us. If people in our town don’t know us by our tree house, they do remember us from the parades. Mom spoiled all of the fun saying it was too dangerous just because baby Dallin was hit in the face with a water balloon one year as he rode in a trailer that my dad was pulling. This year we would have to be like the rest of the crowd and just watch the parade. The only problem with this scenario was that we were not like the rest of the crowd, we were a peculiar family and we always stuck out. My dad could see no point in saving places the night before that was a waste of time, besides we were busy at that time collecting discarded chairs and blankets that people had left on the side of the road.
My dad had a plan, I could see it in his face, and it made me nervous. I didn’t like sticking out, and I hated doing things that could get me into trouble, Dad was the opposite. He was always dragging us into situations that could get us yelled at or driven off in a police car. For instance, he frequently made us get up on the roofs of the local schools so that we could get all of the balls and other things that the students had thrown up there.
The time of the parade arrived and we jumped on our bikes to ride down to Main Street. Before getting on his bike, my dad casually threw a 12 foot ladder on his back. I looked over at Andy and mouthed the words, “A ladder?”
Andy shrugged his shoulders indicating that he hadn’t the foggiest idea what we were about to do.
I looked over again at the interesting sight of my dad on his bike with a ladder on his back and my little sister sitting on an extra seat that he had welded to the frame just in front of his own seat.
As we approached Main Street it was obvious that there were way to many cars for us to make it to Dad’s secret spot without being noticed. While maneuvering through the cars my dad’s ladder caught the side of a car and left a long gash in the shiny red paint. My dad glanced back, but kept riding. Now I really began to panic, I didn’t want to get into trouble for scratching somebody’s car so I hurried as fast as I could across the street, it was a mistake and I knew it as soon as I began the dangerous crossing. A car was coming fast and I saw it, but I needed to stay with my dad so I wouldn’t be blamed for scratching the car. I turned my pedals as fast as my legs would move, but I wasn’t fast enough and the car clipped my back tire. The force threw me most of the rest of the way across the street and I landed softly on the grass; a grand total of a two foot flight.
“Ouch!” I screamed more out of fear than pain.
My brothers and a couple of strangers ran over to me to assess the damage. Dad ran over to the bike, picked it up and immediately began to check all of the different parts to make sure that the precious bike had not been damaged.
“Are you okay?” Andy asked.
“My knee, my knee,” I cried figuring that since that is where I landed, that must be where my injury was.
“Well, it looks like you have some grass stains, and both of your knees are red,” Andy replied trying to sound sympathetic.
“I think my injuries are internal!” I was hopelessly reaching out for any kind of opportunity to get out of this scary situation with the ladder and go home to my mom.
“Shake it off, and let’s get going,” I heard the familiar voice of my father command.
I stood up and walked over to mount my bike with an exaggerated, pitifully looking limp that made me look more like a penguin than a little boy. We ended up riding our bikes to the back of Bountiful Drug. I was still confused, especially since we could not see the parade from where we were standing. My dad got out the ladder and set it against the back of the building.
“Up you go,” he calmly stated staring right at Andy.
Up Andy went without even giving it a second thought. When he reached the top my dad started to climb the ladder. Once Dad reached Andy I saw my brother climb onto his shoulders and suddenly I realized what we were doing. We were going to watch the parade from the roof of Bountiful Drug! It would be a great view, but I could think of two problems; one, we wouldn’t get any candy, and two we would probably end up in jail. As scared as I was of going to jail, I was even more scared of my father, so when it was my turn I obediently climbed the ladder, my father’s shoulders and then the last few feet of the wall until I landed safely on the roof. Dallin was also able to climb up on his own, but Alex and Marne were too short. Luckily, Alex was a good climber so once Andy and I gave him our hands he was able to scurry up the wall with ease. The problem came with Marne. Marne was brave for a girl, but when it came to standing on top of Dad’s shoulders on top of a 12 foot ladder, she reverted back to her silly girl tendencies to freak out. As soon as we grabbed a hold of Marne’s arms she started screaming and kicking as if she were an inflated, untied balloon that had just been released.
“Calm down spas!” I screamed at Marne attempting to facilitate my grip on her flailing body.
“I’m FALLING!” Marne pierced the air with such fury that a nice family of birds in a nearby tree took flight for a safer refuge.
I finally was able to get my arms around her chest and pull her onto the roof. We both tumbled backwards and the gooey snot from her temper tantrum covered my arms and hands in a transparent, sticky film.
My dad came up right behind us and pulled the ladder up after him to cover our tracks, as if six people on top of a roof would not tip anyone off.
I have to admit that we had a great view of the parade. My siblings and I stood right next to the edge for the whole parade, Alex and Marne needed a boost to be able to see over the wall that surrounded the border of the roof.
“Look,” I said to Andy pointing to a dead bird on the ledge.
“Touch it,” I dared Andy. I should have learned my lesson by now, but whenever Andy and I found something new and interesting, I always dared him to touch it to make sure it was safe.
“No way, Dallin you touch it,” Andy said.
Just like always Dallin obeyed, reached out his finger and poked the dead bird. The bird immediately took flight, not by its own power but through the power of gravity. We all three stretched our necks over the ledge and watched the bird falling head over heals toward the ground. The soon to be smashed piece of poultry landed right in the lap of a man who was just about to take a bite out of his sandwich. The man jumped to his feet out of sure fright and knocked his drink onto the people sitting directly in front of him.
We dropped down out of sight, too scared to recognize the humor in the situation. After a couple of minutes we got up to watch the rest of the parade confident that it was now safe to resurface. Andy reached over and brushed the gravel off that had imbedded itself in the skin of my face.
My dad had done it again, he had given us another unique childhood memory that we would never forget. Somehow we got through the parade, got down and rode our bikes through a crowd of police without anyone ever questioning us. The next year we ended up watching the parade lying in hammocks in the Sycamores that provided shade to a section of Main Street.

The Worst Week Ever

(Remember that these are fictional stories based on real events. This blogg is a place for the author's drafts, proofreading will take place at a future date, the author is completely aware of the need for editing and revision)
There are not too many specific dates that I remember, but I will never be able to forget the most horrible week of my life. The week of Oct 3 1988 was when my sister Marne was born. Although Marne has made all of our lives a little more complicated, she was not my reason for despair during these specific days. The source of my regularly reoccurring nightmare for the past 20 years was my dad. When my mom found out that she was going to have a 5th child she immediately decided that she needed a little R&R. She also decided that the best way to take this R&R would be to have a C section instead of a traditional delivery so that she would have a few extra days in the hospital. Yes, my mom was desperate and this was, as she saw it, her only way out.
My dad was a nice guy, he just had some unique ideas that didn’t make sense to anybody else, this uniqueness made it difficult for me to live with Dad without having Mom as a buffer.
The first night started out okay until Alex had to go to the bathroom. Alex was four and supposedly recently potty trained, but apparently he still did not understand the entire concept of a toilet.
“Bryan!” Dad yelled, “come and get this thing off of your brother.”
“I came into the living room assuming that Alex had just stuck the mop bucket on his head again, but as soon as I rounded the corner, my recently healed nose told me that I had my work cut out for me. I did not want to get involved in cleaning Alex up, but I knew better than to defy my dad, there would be no forgiveness for such an act.
“Alex, come over here buddy,” I leeringly coaxed.
He could tell from the look in my eyes what I was up to and he ran for it. Andy and Dallin helped me chase him down and corner him in the back of the laundry room.
“Andy you hold his hands up in the air while Dallin holds his legs and I’ll get these dirty pants off,” I said in a less than motivated tone.
As soon as I had started Alex broke free of Dallin’s grip and kicked him in the head. Dallin went down hard and took the laundry soap with him. Struggling to get back on his feet, Dallin regained control of Alex’s flailing leg and we completed the dirty procedure. I threw the filthy pants in the washer and opened the bathroom door where my dad was waiting to squirt Alex down with a hose he had fashioned to the tub. After two minutes of Alex screaming and Dad yelling, Dad came out to scold us for the mess we had made in the laundry room.
“What’s for dinner Dad?” Dallin boldly asked at about 10 that night. We were starving and hoping that Dad had accomplished enough of his projects that he would be in a good mood and would be feeling generous enough to feed us. He ended up getting out some 50 year old Army Surplus instant dinners. They had great names like “Chicken Ala King,” but the brown and dark green packaging made them look just like they tasted, stale.
“This food will put hair on your chest, its not like the wimpy stuff Mom feeds you, plus its cheap,” Dad told us matter of factly.
As anyone can tell by looking at Andy’s chest, back and ears, he loved the stuff, he ate his share as well as everybody else’s. Once dinner was finished it was time to do the dishes for the day. Dad had us haul all of the dishes into the bathroom and load up the tub.
“Dad didn’t we just clean off Alex in here?” I timidly questioned.
“This is powerful cold water, if you can’t see it, it’s not dirty,” my dad answered.
The dishes were loaded and my dad spent about 30 seconds sprays all of the visible food off the plates, spoons, pans, and glasses. Next, we put all of the dishes on a couple of large bath towels and let the dry for a few minutes before we put them back in their places in the cupboards.
“Dad all of the towels will be wet for our baths,” Andy observed.
“Real men don’t need towels,” he replied. “You first Bryan.”
Obediently I jumped into the tub.
“I don’t make enough money to constantly use the hot water, so brace yourself,” my dad warned right before he turned on the straight cold water and squirted me off just like he had the dishes. “Go turn on the fan in the kitchen and stand in front of it, you’ll be dry in no time.
There was no such thing as privacy in our home and within a few seconds all four boys were standing in the kitchen in front of the fan drying off from their quick “showers.” My dad walked in with a sense of pride on his face, he had saved at least a few cents from making us suffer and he was proud of that accomplishment.
The next day we got to go to the hospital to visit our new baby sister. I knew she was part of the family, but there was something weird about her, I had never been so close to a girl before and I was a little scared.
“Andy I dare you to touch her,” I said.
“No way.”
“I will,” Dallin boldly stated as he walked over and poked Marne in the eye.
This sent the baby into a screaming furry as mom scrambled to pick up her new favorite child. She sent a scowl to all of us as she tried to calm the baby. Meanwhile Alex thought that Dallin’s actions were a permit to create total mayhem so he started climbing the curtain that divided Mom’s room in half. Without warning the curtain crashed to the floor covering Alex in a heap of mess. Just then the nurse walked in the door to see what all of the commotion was. I can’t even imagine what thoughts she must have had as she saw a screaming newborn, three young boys laughing hysterically, a toddler tangled in a mess of ceiling tiles, curtain rods and fabric, and a bald man with a latex glove pulled over his head. She took one look, started to say something, turned and left the room.
Mom ended up sending us all home, and we didn’t get to go back until mom was released from the hospital.
This is basically how it went for the few days that we lived with Dad, Army for dinner, cereal for all other meals, spraying off the dishes and the children, and helping him with his special projects. When mom finally got home, we were grateful for bedtime, bath time, and real food. This was the worst week of my childhood not only because we barely survived, but because of the severe repercussions, repercussions that are still in force today. When I go to visit my mom’s house I am not allowed to poke Marne in the eye, see mom’s large belly scar, or encourage Alex to swing from the curtains.

Sniffing

I suppose that some readers of my life’s story will suppose that I was always calm and in control. The truth is that I, like my brothers, had my own shinning moments. My dad used to take me up to the mountains to go rock hunting. He was addicted to rocks and he took every chance he could get to jump into his 52 Chevy, drive up into the mountains above our house and go rock hunting. At the time I was oblivious to the fact that my dad was loading five ton rocks by into the back of the truck, but as I look at the rock garden in his front yard now, my jaw drops in awe. While my dad was loading rocks my brothers and I spent our time searching for bullet shells. There were always plenty of bullet shells in the mountains because people would frequently get drunk and either shoot the mountain mistaking it for a giant animal, or use their beer cans for target practice.
“Time to go boys,” my dad shouted.
I grabbed my pile of shells and jumped on the tailgate where we all rode the three miles to our house. When we got home I immediately went to work sorting, washing and polishing my pieces of treasure. I compared my favorites with those of my brothers. We did a little trading back and forth and took our private loots back to our secret hiding places. I selected a bullet that I thought was one of my better ones and placed it in my pocket before I ran down to the kitchen to get some lunch. After we had all eaten our sandwiches we just sat there. It was summer and we were bored so we sat at our round kitchen table staring at each other. A few minutes later my dad happened to walk into this dismal scene. I knew that he hated it when we would just sit around wasting the day and if he saw us involved in such fruitless activity he always found something for us to do. Each of us immediately put a serious look on our faces as if we were in such deep mediation that we should not be bothered, but it was too late, our feeble attempts at deception had not come to fruition.
“You’re burning daylight in here kids, come on I need all of your help,” he stated with sure confidence. He walked out the door knowing that his slaves would be right behind him.
We looked at each other; each of us knowing that we had been stupid. If we wanted to sit around doing nothing like normal kids and not be stuck helping my dad with one of his crazy projects then the only thing for us to have done would have been to hide in our closets, something that I had done many times. My dad held the opinion that important things were only the ones on his to do list, everything else including homework, chores, helping mom, or emergency open heart surgery could wait for whatever extremely important project that just happened to occupy his next few days before he would set it aside with the other piles of his beloved, invaluable things that he he simply could not live without. In his view a little sawing, welding and shellacking could turn anything into a valuable object that could someday save the world.
Today was no exception and I ended up outside in his garage holding a bolt for three hours. He strategically placed all of us right where he thought he might need us. He made us stay for the duration of the project just in case he might need us at some future point. It was plain to all of us that this was a one-man project and our rights as free citizens were being trampled on.
“I’m making a break for it,” I whispered to Andy.
“You’re an idiot,” he kindly, but intelligently responded.
I started backing toward that door. I was almost free.
“Foot-Sack-It! Bryan don’t move you’re ruining the whole project!” Dad screamed at me as he continued grinding a small piece of medal sending sparks flying in every direction.
I was stuck and extremely bored. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the shiny bullet that I had placed there earlier. I took it out and decided that it looked like a rocket. My new rocket zoomed around Andy’s head and in and out of Dallin’s ear.
“Stop it Bryan,” whined Dallin.
“Knock it off!” Dad took a brief timeout from his busy schedule to scold me for entertaining myself.
A few seconds later the rocket decided to tickle the hairs on Alex’s neck. Alex swung and slapped himself thinking that the rocket was a mosquito. The loud slap sent the rest of us into a muffled giggle. One glance from my dad put us back in our places and we stood as still as soldiers on the brink of a terrible battle. My rocket surfaced again but this time its journey stayed closer to home base.
“Houston there is a malfunction in the back oxygen tank,” my mind had become lost in imagination.
“Captain bring it in for a landing abort, this mission is over,” replied a second voice within the darkness of my mind.
“Copy Houston.” The rocket zigzagged back and forth. Only an experienced pilot could bring this renegade to a landing. The rocket headed for the safety of the first dark, moist hole it could find.
Lost in another world I crash landed the bullet shell inside of my right nostril. In my rush to obey the commands of an imaginary command post I had wedged a small piece of metal inside of my head. I immediately discontinued all breathing activity from my nose and started breathing out of my mouth to avoid the shell from working its way into my brain. Safe for the moment I closed my eyes and began to panic. I was silent for the rest of my stay in my dad’s shop. I just stood there hoping that dad would finish quickly because I felt as if my head was on fire. Thoughts of my mother weeping hysterically at my funeral flashed through my mind.
I was at last released from my servitude for the night. I motioned Andy to come up to my room with me. I really did not want to admit my stupidity to anyone, but this was an emergency, my life hung in the balance.
“You did what?” Andy asked as if he didn’t believe me.
“You heard me, I got one of my bullets stuck in my nose,” I embarrassingly replied.
“How...”
“Don’t even ask. I need you to help me get it out.”
I pulled out a flashlight and handed it to Andy.
“I don’t see it, but there sure is a lot of dirt in here,” Andy mentioned as he was straddling my chest and staring up my nose.
“Grab the magnifying glass in the top drawer of the desk,” I replied with a slight accent created from Andy’s fingers working to shove the flashlight inside my nose.
“Wow, I never knew how cool the inside of a nose could be.”
“Yeah, yeah whatever, but do you see the bullet casing?”
“Yep, here it is. Oh, wait a second… nope, never mind it’s just a piece of corn. How did you get a piece of corn inside your nose?”
“I like to sniff things okay, just get it out and look in the other side. It’s in the right side, not the left,” I was losing my patience and wanted to get this thing pulled out, not to mention that it had become exceedingly difficult to breath with my brother sitting on my chest.
“Okay I see it now. Wow, it looks to be a perfect fit,” Andy grabbed the tweezers and started tugging.
I screamed. I was brave, but this hurt, and I was not used to having things extracted from my nose.
“What’s going on up there?” my mom yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“Sorry mom, Bryan just smashed his nose,” Andy called back down. He then turned back to me to convey the bad news. “It’s no use. I think you’re going to have to tell mom and have Dad pull it out.
“No way!” I resolutely stated, “I’ll find a way out of this.”
We went down for dinner, but it did not last long. Every time Andy looked at me he started laughing. My mom sent us both away hungry, since she thought we were laughing at her cooking abilities. With the extra time in my room I decided to play with the bullet wedged in my nose. I could feel it, but it was such a perfect fit that I couldn’t get any leverage. I kept at it and soon my nose became so raw that it felt like it was on fire. Just then I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed a tube of Vaseline and shoved it up my nose as far as it would go. I emptied as much jelly as would fit around the bullet casing.
I began to flare and flex my nose rapidly. “Flare and flex, flare and flex,” I kept repeating inside of my head. With every flex I could feel the bullet loosening and even though chunks of red petroleum jelly fell from my face I continued to persevere. Before long I could feel the bullet sticking out of my nose. I grabbed the tweezers and ripped it out. I threw the bad memory into the garbage and at that moment decided to retire from collecting bullet shells. Yes, this experience may have left me with lasting scars on the inside of my right nostril, but this trial provided Andy and I with an increased respect for one another. To this day I still respect Andy for having the courage to stick his fingers up my nose and he respects me for having the courage to rip a sharp metal object out of my soft facial tissue.

Teaching Dallin to Fetch

One of the key moments of my childhood was the day that Andy and I realized that our younger brother Dallin was going to take extra time to develop the common sense portion of his brain. We came across this piece of intelligence by sheer happenstance. I had always thought that along with being born with defined muscles, Dallin was born with a natural tan, but I was about to learn an important secret.
I walked in the back door expecting to smell mom’s fresh bread, but as I entered the house my nose didn’t even have a chance to survey its surroundings as a piercing scream filled my ears with a horrible pain. I made my way toward the bathroom and the source of the blood curdling noise.
“You’re washing off my skin!” I heard Dallin screaming.
“Be still boy,” my mom was still calm, but on the verge of losing it. “This is not a tan, it is dirt. You need to learn how to wash yourself. I should have done this a long time ago.”
Apparently my mom was giving Dallin a bath. This was highly unusual, in fact I couldn’t remember the last time that my mom had bathed any of us. A few minutes later Dallin immerged from the bathroom crying and with a towel around his waist.
“Mom scrubbed my skin off,” he sadly mentioned to me on his way up the stairs to his room.”
He was white! I couldn’t believe it, all of this time I thought that Dallin had a tan and it was really nothing but dirt. This new information set in motion the thinking wheels in my mind. I was coming up with a brilliant plan and I had to find Andy so we could work out the details.
I found Andy outside in the tree house with a plastic gun in his pocket, a fake police badge pinned sideways on his shirt, cowboy boots, and his superman cape.
“Command, command pick up this is Agent Skelton,” He whispered into an imaginary microphone on his Mickey Mouse watch. “I have eliminated the threat here on planet Z and I am ready to be beamed back home.”
He looked a little disturbed so I didn’t want to interrupt his imagination just yet. He then began tapping his watch as if the pretend microphone could actually break. “Darn piece of junk,” he said to himself. The next thing I knew he was looking up, obviously at some dark, looming, imaginary figure.
“I, I don’t have it, ii-its gone,” he said to the thin air.
“Liar!” Andy screamed in a scratchy voice, pretending to be his own arch enemy.
My brother then made a loud bang sound and lay on the tree trunk pretending to be fatally injured. I had had enough and was ready to make an end to this embarrassing moment in my brother’s history.
“Alright Captain Kirk playtime is over. Climb on down here I want to talk to you about something,” I said in a condescending tone.
Once we were safe in the confines of our secluded room I made my proposal.
“So come to find out, Dallin is having trouble developing a sharp mind,” I began as I related to him the story of Dallin’s bath time.
Our diabolical plan was simple, we would get Dallin to run all of our errands for us. All we would have to do is use our watches as props and tell him that we were going to see how fast he could do certain projects. The key to the whole operation were the watches and the phrase “wow that was even faster than the last time.” We decided to give it a test run.
“Dallin let’s see how fast you can run in the house and get us some of Dad’s chocolate,” I slyly said.
“Won’t I get in trouble?
“Not if you go fast enough,” I replied. “Ready, set, go.”
He was off like a bullet and in no time he had returned with our prize.
“Wow that was even faster than the last time,” Andy shouted.
I elbowed Andy in the side. “This is the first time we’ve done this there is not last time. What’s wrong with you?” I whispered under my breath.
“Oh yeah,” he replied.
“Actually Dallin you did that in exactly 37 seconds,” I said correcting Andy’s almost fatal mistake. “Let’s see if you can do it again, only faster.”
Before I could even say go, he was off.
“Alright Andy this time when he comes back you can say your line.”
“That was even faster than the next time,” Andy shouted as Dallin returned with more chocolate.
“Last time, “I corrected.
“I mean last time”
“Wow, I am fast,” Dallin bragged.
“Yes, you are little brother, way faster than either of us that’s why this is such a fun game.” I deviously replied.
Our little game even expanded to include Alex once he was out of diapers, and for a while we had a blissful arrangement. Eventually Dallin started to develop the common sense that he had lacked and started using this game on Alex and Marne. Andy and I decided to stop before our parents caught on to our little game. Dallin however, is still getting away playing fetch with Alex. For example, a few months ago Dallin bought a new truck here in Salt Lake off of eBay. He told Alex he would time him to see how fast he could drive the truck to his house in South Dakota. That weekend Alex and his wife drove off to South Dakota, both believing that they were in some kind of secret race. Dallin even went above and beyond all expectations when he gave them a nice bowling trophy he had bought at a thrift shop. He simply scratched their names in with a paperclip. They have proudly placed the trophy Dallin gave them in their apartment next to their statue of Milli Vanilli. The cute couple is always confused when people ask them if they bowl.