The day I got poked

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.