Life isn’t always about clean underwear and delightful chocolates. Sometimes life can be downright risky and foreboding. The following entry from my life falls into such a category. I am not one to go around patting myself on the back, but I will anyway. I am the most diligent, assiduous, steadfast, tireless person that I have ever known (incidentally I have recently purchased a new, bulky address book as my old one run out of pages). It is hard for me to bring back to my memory the horrible events of July 24th 1987, but the story must be told to inspire those individuals who happen to be less dedicated to happiness than myself.
It was not as if my telepathic and fortune telling-abilities forewarned that the day would change my life forever. That fateful July morning started as any other morning would have started. I woke up changed my underwear and socks and went downstairs to eat a stale piece of bread and a glass of water that my mother had generously provided for me. After breakfast I went in to tell my lovely mother that I would be going outside for awhile.
“Mom, I’m going out for a minute,” I kindly remarked.
“Please be quiet and get out of here, my head is killing me,” she retorted back to me through the heating pad that she had formed into some kind of medieval knight’s helmet.
I was surprised that she was not a little more kind with me since she had kept me out of the bathroom while she snorted salt water up through her nose for two hours in an attempt to relieve some self-inflicted migraine-type pain that would always conveniently appear when she wanted to avoid something. I was more forgiving than most, so it didn’t even occur to me to be offended for more than a few days, even though my already tender bladder had now been harmed for the remainder of my remarkable life.
I moved to the back door and opened it with my stealth-like abilities. I was quick, I was quiet, and I was a force to be reckoned with. I had not yet informed the CIA of my talents, but I would eventually. For now it was time to practice my investigative skills and look for clues. Surely there must be some crime that needed to be solved that had recently occurred in my front yard.
As I emerged from the garage, I heard the slow purr of a Ford F150, blue in color and in fairly good condition for its age. I had not yet seen the vehicle, but I had an uncanny ability to identify cars by their sound. I ducked behind a bike just as the green pinto passed by. I looked through the spokes at the car looking for anything suspicious.
“What are you doing?” My brother Dallin asked in a suspicious voice.
“Solving a mystery, if that’s quite alright with you.”
“I want in, give me an assignment,” Dallin eagerly responded.
“Go hide behind that fence and keep completely silent.”
“Aye, aye Captain.”
With Dallin out of the way I was now able to complete my dangerous mission. I headed down the sidewalk, careful not to step on cracks or suspicious debris that could easily be booby traps. I saw it before my foot lowered---the object was green in color and covered in some kind of spikes that had obviously been dipped in poison. In an effort to avoid an early death, I threw myself into a body roll that would safely land me on the other side of the obstacle. The evil object must have had some sort of magnetic force field because it jerked my body out of my perfectly executed roll, pulling me toward an extremely painful landing. Because of my extremely large calf muscles, I had plenty of time during my decent to analyze the situation. I knew that the green spiked object could only have come from one source, the KGB. But, how would the KGB know about me? And if they did have agents in the area, why had I not detected them? Just before impact I looked up and noticed an entire tree filled with these poisoned balls. The KGB had somehow managed to plant an entire tree overnight. My brilliant discovery was rudely interrupted by the shot of pain in my back. The poison immediately took effect as my normally-high threshold of pain disappeared.
Keeping my senses I immediately jumped to my feet and started running in circles screaming at the top of my lungs, “Help! Help! They’re here, and they have infiltrated our defenses!”
“Bryan! Get out of the road and stop your screaming,” my mom yelled as she poked her head out the front door.
Abandoning the road I ran up the driveway. I could hear Dallin giggling as I past his hideout behind the fence. At last I reached the safety of my front room, still screaming at the top of my lungs.
“Why in the world do you have a horse chestnut stuck in your back?" my father calmly asked.
I attempted to answer in a respectful manner, but time was of the essence, the poison would soon reach my heart. “Get it out, NOW!”
My father wasted no time. He reached up and tore the weapon out of my skin. I remember nothing past that point, for the feelings were so intense that even I, trained in resistance to torture as I had been, fainted because of the pain.
To this day I wear the mark of the KGB on my back: a scar right across my spine that has the appearance of Donny Osmond. That tree still sits in my front yard. I continue to selflessly protect my little community by spending countless hours smashing each chestnut that falls from the tree with a baseball bat. I also sell countless pictures of my famous scar at ilovedonny.com.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Skiing
I have always been an exceptional athlete, born with an athletic build and sharp reflexes, sports have always come natural to me. This unfortunate curse (I refer to my talent in this context as a curse because of the extreme jealousy that my innate skills invited from substantially less talented siblings) has in fact led to several unique opportunities. For instance, I was once invited to join a traveling band of famous athletes. They praised my parents with such language as special, one-of-a-kind, limited, memorable, rare, and unusual. I would have enjoyed playing with all of their exotic animals, however the chafing I got from my allergies would never allow me to perform with such creatures.
Another opportunity that my athleticism presented to me was the opportunity to train to be a world-class skier. One day I decided to splurge and eat out at Article Circle. As I approached the counter the culinary request technician happened to notice my athletic build. Capitalizing on this amazing opportunity, she had no choice but to provide me with a special invitation.
“Would you like to buy these night skiing tickets?” she asked in a flirtatious, admiring (bordering on worshiping) tone.
“I have never skied before, but I am sure that I would be a natural,” I said to myself while staring blankly at the wall.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” asked the culinary request technician.
“You know what? I am going to take two tickets. I appreciate your confidence in my abilities,” I awkwardly added.
The culinary request technician looked at me with a puzzled squint. I stuck out my chest to augment the quality of the limited time she had dedicated to her stare, the self-time-restriction being required in order to keep her gaze within the strict time regulations for a socially acceptable admiration session.
I took the tickets and strutted to my seat, proud that I had yet again managed to impress the opposite sex with my refined personality and stunning good looks.
I found a nice booth and sat down with Han, my extremely uncoordinated bosom buddy.
“Yum,” I said licking the fry sauce off my chin that was left over from my extremely delicious spicy fries. “So, ya wanna go skiing this weekend?” I asked my friend.
“Nothing would please me more my young padawan, nothing would please me more.” Han was a great friend and he was extremely intelligent when it came to school, but he was a little weird and slow when it came to social issues.
During school the following day Han and I worked out that his sister would drive us up the canyon and drop us off while we skied the slopes for a couple of hours. That night the car pulled up in front of my house about four in the afternoon. Sen, Han’s sister, rolled down the passenger window and I pushed my rental skis over Han’s head. The two pair of skis barely fit on a diagonal. We figured out that we couldn’t quite roll the window up all of the way, but luckily we were all dressed in our warm winter clothes. With the heater blaring and the skis sticking out of the window, we hit the freeway cruising at a comfortable 45mph to keep down the wind chill on the inside of the car.
“Our exit is coming up Sen,” I mentioned as we were about to pass the I-215 turn-off.
Realizing that we were in the far left lane, Sen looked in the rear view where she saw several cars attempting to get around our 45 mph go-cart. She had no choice; time was too short to wait it out. Sen hit the gas while simultaneously pulling the steering wheel to the right. The sudden force put on the skis by the now 55mph wind snapped one of Han’s skis in half.
“My ski, my ski!” Han frantically yelled as we moved parallel across four lanes with half of Han’s body hanging out the window in hopes that his cursing would bring back the prodigal ski.
I looked back just in time to see the ski just miss the car behind us, it hit the road for a brief second until a dump truck ran over the top of it, the ski flew into the air again and disappeared over the edge of the overpass that we were approaching. We drove on toward the canyon, shocked at the events that had just transpired, and frozen because of the huge, wet flakes that had started to fall from the sky.
By the time we arrived at the ski resort we were wet and tired from the long ride. We bought our tickets and got on the lift. As we approached the top of the run I got off the lift and was almost clear of disaster when I felt Han’s icy hand grab my coat. The distraction was just enough to throw me off course and I headed sideways instead of straight ahead. I crashed hard into the ski lift operator and looked behind me to see Han dangling from the lift chair.
“Help, Help!” Han yelled as he hung dangerously 3 inches from the ground.
The operator struggled to stop the lift, but I had unfortunately pinned him to the ground. I tried frantically to remove myself from this precarious position, but the awkwardness of the skis overpowered my agile body.
The ski patrol rushed to help Han as he unfortunately continued on the lift that could not be stopped.
“Jump!” they yelled at my dangling friend.
“I can’t I’m stuck, get me out!” Han started to panic as he kicked and screamed like a trapped, overweight female badger.
Just as the situation looked hopeless as Han’s chair made the loop to go back down the mountain, one of the ski patrol made a daring leap and grabbed Han by his boots. I heard the rip and I immediately knew something had gone wrong. I looked up just in time to see one of the sleeves of Han’s coat disappear down the side of the mountain.
I looked over at my friend with his broken ski and missing sleeve as some of the ski patrol reached down and helped him up. The men wished us luck as they looked questioningly at Han’s half ski and naked left arm.
We started off down the hill, but only made it a couple of feet before I saw Han approaching me extremely fast out of the corner of my eye.
“Watch out!” I yelled in a terrified, hopeless voice.
It was too late. I found myself pinned under Han’s 95 lb. skimpy body, sucking in fresh powder with every breath.
“Get off me you big oaf!”
“That was awesome,” was all that he could manage to say through his high nasal laughter. He stood up and took hold of my coat to attempt to pull me out of the snow bank that had recently become my best friend.
“Han, your stupid broken ski is giving me splinters get it off my back!” I said, but unfortunately the snow translated my perfect English into a mumbled mess.
Han fell over laughing leaving my face planted in the snow and my backside covered in fiberglass slivers from his wind damaged ski.
“Get back over here, this isn’t funny, I can’t even breath,” my mumblings only making my former friend laugh harder and harder.
He came over and after several more tries he managed to pull me up. Now I was wet, tired and irritated at my little laughing grasshopper looking partner who happened to think that everything was hilarious.
Two hours later we sat together on the side of the mountain. We still had not made it down the hill and both of our legs burned.
“I may be extremely good at skiing, but my legs sure to ache.” I complainingly remarked.
“Fun,” replied Han.
“I don’t think this sport was meant to be fun, it’s too painful.”
“Let’s go faster.”
“Yeah, we sure could go a lot faster if you didn’t have your stupid, gimp ski,” I thought to myself, but what I actually said was, “Han, you’re right, this time let me go first and let’s see if we can’t make it down this next hill with some real speed.”
I took off with a determination to make it to the bottom of the 30 foot hill. “Stay on your feet twinkle toes, stay on your feet,” I kept repeating to myself. I began to pick up more and more speed. I was flying now and I felt like I could conquer the world, at least until I thought about the fact that I had no idea how to turn and I was headed right for an orange, plastic fence. I immediately froze and began to imagine how horrible I was going to feel after I collided with a florescent barrier. I didn’t have to much time to think about my tragedy before I slammed into the fence. The tips of my skis went through the wholes in the plastic, the material naturally wrapped around my legs and through me into a beautiful front flip. My head stopped my flip as it slammed into the ice. There I sat upside down with a perfect view of the hillside that I had just skied down with such finesse. I noticed an object heading toward me.
“That looks a lot like Han,” I thought to myself, “He sure has a lot of balance to be able to steer straight when half of his left ski is missing.” As I was deep in thought I remember hearing a loud screaming noise coming from my own mouth, and then everything went black.
When the lights came back on the only difference that I noticed was that I was experiencing more pain throughout my entire body, I also now had a partner with whom I got to pass away the time in the giant florescent orange human spider web.
“Nice move,” I sarcastically complimented my friend on his aim.
“Thanks, that was fun,” Han commented as he started into his laughter again.
It didn’t take the ski patrol long to free us from our misery once they found us and took several photographs. Unfortunately for myself, my fame as a world-class skier was too tempting for those amateurs. They couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pose with such an amazing athletic specimen.
Our luck turned for the better on the way home, we were fairly comfortable before the hypothermia set in. My first training session had not been exactly what I had expected, but I had learned my lesson and I would never go skiing with Han again. I never did make the Olympics, I had to drop training due to a lack of finances, but to this day my picture remains posted in the lodge where I first went skiing.
Another opportunity that my athleticism presented to me was the opportunity to train to be a world-class skier. One day I decided to splurge and eat out at Article Circle. As I approached the counter the culinary request technician happened to notice my athletic build. Capitalizing on this amazing opportunity, she had no choice but to provide me with a special invitation.
“Would you like to buy these night skiing tickets?” she asked in a flirtatious, admiring (bordering on worshiping) tone.
“I have never skied before, but I am sure that I would be a natural,” I said to myself while staring blankly at the wall.
“I’m sorry, did you say something?” asked the culinary request technician.
“You know what? I am going to take two tickets. I appreciate your confidence in my abilities,” I awkwardly added.
The culinary request technician looked at me with a puzzled squint. I stuck out my chest to augment the quality of the limited time she had dedicated to her stare, the self-time-restriction being required in order to keep her gaze within the strict time regulations for a socially acceptable admiration session.
I took the tickets and strutted to my seat, proud that I had yet again managed to impress the opposite sex with my refined personality and stunning good looks.
I found a nice booth and sat down with Han, my extremely uncoordinated bosom buddy.
“Yum,” I said licking the fry sauce off my chin that was left over from my extremely delicious spicy fries. “So, ya wanna go skiing this weekend?” I asked my friend.
“Nothing would please me more my young padawan, nothing would please me more.” Han was a great friend and he was extremely intelligent when it came to school, but he was a little weird and slow when it came to social issues.
During school the following day Han and I worked out that his sister would drive us up the canyon and drop us off while we skied the slopes for a couple of hours. That night the car pulled up in front of my house about four in the afternoon. Sen, Han’s sister, rolled down the passenger window and I pushed my rental skis over Han’s head. The two pair of skis barely fit on a diagonal. We figured out that we couldn’t quite roll the window up all of the way, but luckily we were all dressed in our warm winter clothes. With the heater blaring and the skis sticking out of the window, we hit the freeway cruising at a comfortable 45mph to keep down the wind chill on the inside of the car.
“Our exit is coming up Sen,” I mentioned as we were about to pass the I-215 turn-off.
Realizing that we were in the far left lane, Sen looked in the rear view where she saw several cars attempting to get around our 45 mph go-cart. She had no choice; time was too short to wait it out. Sen hit the gas while simultaneously pulling the steering wheel to the right. The sudden force put on the skis by the now 55mph wind snapped one of Han’s skis in half.
“My ski, my ski!” Han frantically yelled as we moved parallel across four lanes with half of Han’s body hanging out the window in hopes that his cursing would bring back the prodigal ski.
I looked back just in time to see the ski just miss the car behind us, it hit the road for a brief second until a dump truck ran over the top of it, the ski flew into the air again and disappeared over the edge of the overpass that we were approaching. We drove on toward the canyon, shocked at the events that had just transpired, and frozen because of the huge, wet flakes that had started to fall from the sky.
By the time we arrived at the ski resort we were wet and tired from the long ride. We bought our tickets and got on the lift. As we approached the top of the run I got off the lift and was almost clear of disaster when I felt Han’s icy hand grab my coat. The distraction was just enough to throw me off course and I headed sideways instead of straight ahead. I crashed hard into the ski lift operator and looked behind me to see Han dangling from the lift chair.
“Help, Help!” Han yelled as he hung dangerously 3 inches from the ground.
The operator struggled to stop the lift, but I had unfortunately pinned him to the ground. I tried frantically to remove myself from this precarious position, but the awkwardness of the skis overpowered my agile body.
The ski patrol rushed to help Han as he unfortunately continued on the lift that could not be stopped.
“Jump!” they yelled at my dangling friend.
“I can’t I’m stuck, get me out!” Han started to panic as he kicked and screamed like a trapped, overweight female badger.
Just as the situation looked hopeless as Han’s chair made the loop to go back down the mountain, one of the ski patrol made a daring leap and grabbed Han by his boots. I heard the rip and I immediately knew something had gone wrong. I looked up just in time to see one of the sleeves of Han’s coat disappear down the side of the mountain.
I looked over at my friend with his broken ski and missing sleeve as some of the ski patrol reached down and helped him up. The men wished us luck as they looked questioningly at Han’s half ski and naked left arm.
We started off down the hill, but only made it a couple of feet before I saw Han approaching me extremely fast out of the corner of my eye.
“Watch out!” I yelled in a terrified, hopeless voice.
It was too late. I found myself pinned under Han’s 95 lb. skimpy body, sucking in fresh powder with every breath.
“Get off me you big oaf!”
“That was awesome,” was all that he could manage to say through his high nasal laughter. He stood up and took hold of my coat to attempt to pull me out of the snow bank that had recently become my best friend.
“Han, your stupid broken ski is giving me splinters get it off my back!” I said, but unfortunately the snow translated my perfect English into a mumbled mess.
Han fell over laughing leaving my face planted in the snow and my backside covered in fiberglass slivers from his wind damaged ski.
“Get back over here, this isn’t funny, I can’t even breath,” my mumblings only making my former friend laugh harder and harder.
He came over and after several more tries he managed to pull me up. Now I was wet, tired and irritated at my little laughing grasshopper looking partner who happened to think that everything was hilarious.
Two hours later we sat together on the side of the mountain. We still had not made it down the hill and both of our legs burned.
“I may be extremely good at skiing, but my legs sure to ache.” I complainingly remarked.
“Fun,” replied Han.
“I don’t think this sport was meant to be fun, it’s too painful.”
“Let’s go faster.”
“Yeah, we sure could go a lot faster if you didn’t have your stupid, gimp ski,” I thought to myself, but what I actually said was, “Han, you’re right, this time let me go first and let’s see if we can’t make it down this next hill with some real speed.”
I took off with a determination to make it to the bottom of the 30 foot hill. “Stay on your feet twinkle toes, stay on your feet,” I kept repeating to myself. I began to pick up more and more speed. I was flying now and I felt like I could conquer the world, at least until I thought about the fact that I had no idea how to turn and I was headed right for an orange, plastic fence. I immediately froze and began to imagine how horrible I was going to feel after I collided with a florescent barrier. I didn’t have to much time to think about my tragedy before I slammed into the fence. The tips of my skis went through the wholes in the plastic, the material naturally wrapped around my legs and through me into a beautiful front flip. My head stopped my flip as it slammed into the ice. There I sat upside down with a perfect view of the hillside that I had just skied down with such finesse. I noticed an object heading toward me.
“That looks a lot like Han,” I thought to myself, “He sure has a lot of balance to be able to steer straight when half of his left ski is missing.” As I was deep in thought I remember hearing a loud screaming noise coming from my own mouth, and then everything went black.
When the lights came back on the only difference that I noticed was that I was experiencing more pain throughout my entire body, I also now had a partner with whom I got to pass away the time in the giant florescent orange human spider web.
“Nice move,” I sarcastically complimented my friend on his aim.
“Thanks, that was fun,” Han commented as he started into his laughter again.
It didn’t take the ski patrol long to free us from our misery once they found us and took several photographs. Unfortunately for myself, my fame as a world-class skier was too tempting for those amateurs. They couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pose with such an amazing athletic specimen.
Our luck turned for the better on the way home, we were fairly comfortable before the hypothermia set in. My first training session had not been exactly what I had expected, but I had learned my lesson and I would never go skiing with Han again. I never did make the Olympics, I had to drop training due to a lack of finances, but to this day my picture remains posted in the lodge where I first went skiing.
Monday, April 6, 2009
My Superiority
I know there is a lot of editing to be done, but I wanted to get something on here since it has been such a long time.
It is suspiciously amazing that I turned out to be the perfect person that I am with the kind of childhood that I experienced. It was not that my parents did not love me, they did. It wasn’t even that my parents didn’t try, because they did. But for some unfortunate reason my dad was blessed with intelligence, but no social skills. My mom had an overdeveloped social personality and an unfortunately low standardized IQ score. This combination equated into a very difficult childhood for myself. I inherited my mother’s social brilliance and my father’s high intelligence, but unfortunately for my siblings, they all inherited my mother’s mentally-challenged status. My incessant mumbling actually has a point and that is that it was a blessing for my siblings that they were so slow, and that was that they never realized what an incredibly hard childhood we all shared. Examples: My dad would entertain us on the Fourth of July with road flares; my mom would forget to make dinner a few nights in a row in which case we were forced to eat “leftovers.”
One of my most memorable childhood adventures came at an early age. Dad had recently made a few “modifications” to our little red wagon.
We had just finished eating our “leftovers” which consisted of crusty bread and water when Dad called us out. “Andy! Bryan! Get out here!” he yelled, demonstrating his lack of tact.
“They’ll be out as soon as they finish their morsels,” Mom called back as she lay in her chair with a headache that had been brewing for three days from when my father decided to use gas to polish our silverware. A biography of my childhood would not be complete without a little side discussion about “The Chair.” There are some inanimate objects in our life that are interwoven with numerous memories and experiences, in essence they are a part of the family. I like to sleep in a bed; it does not have to be a comfy bed, a round bed or even a rectangular bed. I have slept in a bed with mice, bed bugs, and even lizards, but I have always enjoyed a normal, healthy night’s sleep. However, every time that I have slept in a chair of any kind I have experienced what most would label a rough night. My mom would argue the opposite, she slept in the chair. It is not as if The Chair had a major role in any of the most significant parts of my life, it was not present when I was born, on my first date, or when I accidently crashed my mom’s car before I had a license, but that chair was a support to the backbone of our family. The Chair, simply put, lived for the sole purpose of supporting my mom.
“Holy horse confetti!” I exclaimed upon seeing our new and improved Radio Flyer for the first time.
“What in the world is that supposed to mean?” Andy asked looking at me with a blank stare.
“Apparently you have not seen a horse with gas bubbles,” I replied while continuing toward my dad’s new creation.
What sat before our eyes in the driveway and used to be our old read wagon, was now something that resembled a UFO more that a shinny red Radio Flyer wagon. The wagon was now covered by a huge, multicolored umbrella. Dad had mounted a steering wheel to the front of the wagon and had placed a beautiful black vinyl seat, complete with a backrest, in the back of the wagon. My dad had also welded a hook to the end of the handle that would fasten to the back of his bike.
“Hop in Andy,” Dad commanded more than requested.
“Why am I always first?” Andy whined.
Off they went flying up and down the street. Andy looked to be having the time of his life, but I was too busy thinking about my own interests to care very much. I knew that I was next and being the important addition to society that I was, I was concerned for my safety. This concern was not some egocentric apprehension for my self preservation, but a genuine regard for the good of humanity; the conservation of my estimable wisdom was vital. Andy returned from his ride. It was my turn. I sluggishly stepped into the special trailer and knew that I had to be one of the bravest people to ever walk the face of the earth. As soon as my fingers wrapped themselves around the wooden steering wheel, my head was jerked back by the speed of my dad’s acceleration. As we hit the bump leaving the driveway, the wagon’s non-inflatable wheel’s had no chance to absorb the force. I flew, but fortunately for my superhuman grip, I managed to literally hang on by the tips of my fingers as my legs flew above my head for a few seconds. With my butt safely back on hot vinyl I concentrated on staying alive. Out of fear that my dad would hit a bump and injure himself, I strategically decided to let out a compassionate, continual scream. People all up and down the street were looking out of their windows and coming out of their houses to see my amazing, X-game worthy skills.
Dad turned into the driveway and pulled me all the way up the hill to the entrance of the garage. Just as I was congratulating myself on surviving my recent horror ride, I realized that Dad’s back tire was shrinking. I grabbed the wooden steering wheel and took my future into my own hands. I turned the wheel back and forth with such force that I was giving myself splinters, but with my high threshold for pain, I didn’t even notice them for a few days. Despite my heroics, I was headed for the road with such speed that even a trained NASA astronaut would have fainted. My custom Radio Flyer hit the lip of the driveway going about 10 mph, the wagon flew into the street with such height that I easily cleared the family squirrel that had heard the commotion and come out to join the fun. Once past the squirrel, I came to a rolling stop in the gutter on the opposite side of the street, as the wheels crashed against the curb my weight became unevenly distributed and I tipped into the stale puddle of gutter water where the local earthworms had gathered to bask in the warm summer sun.
After a couple of weeks I had completely recovered from my injuries and I was cleared by my doctor to once again entertain guests and do my daily chores. Once again, I had used my superior genes to survive a near childhood tragedy. Andy on the other hand experienced many nights where he wet the bed for the next several years upon seeing me, his hero, nearly lose my amazing, unadulterated life.
It is suspiciously amazing that I turned out to be the perfect person that I am with the kind of childhood that I experienced. It was not that my parents did not love me, they did. It wasn’t even that my parents didn’t try, because they did. But for some unfortunate reason my dad was blessed with intelligence, but no social skills. My mom had an overdeveloped social personality and an unfortunately low standardized IQ score. This combination equated into a very difficult childhood for myself. I inherited my mother’s social brilliance and my father’s high intelligence, but unfortunately for my siblings, they all inherited my mother’s mentally-challenged status. My incessant mumbling actually has a point and that is that it was a blessing for my siblings that they were so slow, and that was that they never realized what an incredibly hard childhood we all shared. Examples: My dad would entertain us on the Fourth of July with road flares; my mom would forget to make dinner a few nights in a row in which case we were forced to eat “leftovers.”
One of my most memorable childhood adventures came at an early age. Dad had recently made a few “modifications” to our little red wagon.
We had just finished eating our “leftovers” which consisted of crusty bread and water when Dad called us out. “Andy! Bryan! Get out here!” he yelled, demonstrating his lack of tact.
“They’ll be out as soon as they finish their morsels,” Mom called back as she lay in her chair with a headache that had been brewing for three days from when my father decided to use gas to polish our silverware. A biography of my childhood would not be complete without a little side discussion about “The Chair.” There are some inanimate objects in our life that are interwoven with numerous memories and experiences, in essence they are a part of the family. I like to sleep in a bed; it does not have to be a comfy bed, a round bed or even a rectangular bed. I have slept in a bed with mice, bed bugs, and even lizards, but I have always enjoyed a normal, healthy night’s sleep. However, every time that I have slept in a chair of any kind I have experienced what most would label a rough night. My mom would argue the opposite, she slept in the chair. It is not as if The Chair had a major role in any of the most significant parts of my life, it was not present when I was born, on my first date, or when I accidently crashed my mom’s car before I had a license, but that chair was a support to the backbone of our family. The Chair, simply put, lived for the sole purpose of supporting my mom.
“Holy horse confetti!” I exclaimed upon seeing our new and improved Radio Flyer for the first time.
“What in the world is that supposed to mean?” Andy asked looking at me with a blank stare.
“Apparently you have not seen a horse with gas bubbles,” I replied while continuing toward my dad’s new creation.
What sat before our eyes in the driveway and used to be our old read wagon, was now something that resembled a UFO more that a shinny red Radio Flyer wagon. The wagon was now covered by a huge, multicolored umbrella. Dad had mounted a steering wheel to the front of the wagon and had placed a beautiful black vinyl seat, complete with a backrest, in the back of the wagon. My dad had also welded a hook to the end of the handle that would fasten to the back of his bike.
“Hop in Andy,” Dad commanded more than requested.
“Why am I always first?” Andy whined.
Off they went flying up and down the street. Andy looked to be having the time of his life, but I was too busy thinking about my own interests to care very much. I knew that I was next and being the important addition to society that I was, I was concerned for my safety. This concern was not some egocentric apprehension for my self preservation, but a genuine regard for the good of humanity; the conservation of my estimable wisdom was vital. Andy returned from his ride. It was my turn. I sluggishly stepped into the special trailer and knew that I had to be one of the bravest people to ever walk the face of the earth. As soon as my fingers wrapped themselves around the wooden steering wheel, my head was jerked back by the speed of my dad’s acceleration. As we hit the bump leaving the driveway, the wagon’s non-inflatable wheel’s had no chance to absorb the force. I flew, but fortunately for my superhuman grip, I managed to literally hang on by the tips of my fingers as my legs flew above my head for a few seconds. With my butt safely back on hot vinyl I concentrated on staying alive. Out of fear that my dad would hit a bump and injure himself, I strategically decided to let out a compassionate, continual scream. People all up and down the street were looking out of their windows and coming out of their houses to see my amazing, X-game worthy skills.
Dad turned into the driveway and pulled me all the way up the hill to the entrance of the garage. Just as I was congratulating myself on surviving my recent horror ride, I realized that Dad’s back tire was shrinking. I grabbed the wooden steering wheel and took my future into my own hands. I turned the wheel back and forth with such force that I was giving myself splinters, but with my high threshold for pain, I didn’t even notice them for a few days. Despite my heroics, I was headed for the road with such speed that even a trained NASA astronaut would have fainted. My custom Radio Flyer hit the lip of the driveway going about 10 mph, the wagon flew into the street with such height that I easily cleared the family squirrel that had heard the commotion and come out to join the fun. Once past the squirrel, I came to a rolling stop in the gutter on the opposite side of the street, as the wheels crashed against the curb my weight became unevenly distributed and I tipped into the stale puddle of gutter water where the local earthworms had gathered to bask in the warm summer sun.
After a couple of weeks I had completely recovered from my injuries and I was cleared by my doctor to once again entertain guests and do my daily chores. Once again, I had used my superior genes to survive a near childhood tragedy. Andy on the other hand experienced many nights where he wet the bed for the next several years upon seeing me, his hero, nearly lose my amazing, unadulterated life.
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