Glad I’m Here to Tell the Story
While listening to a podcast recently, the interviewee was telling a story of a time he made a bad decision in his early teens, and could have died. I started daydreaming, remembering so many times that things could have gone really wrong.
7or 8 year old me
The one that really stands out in my mind is when I was 8 years old playing in the barn behind our house, but I’ll get to that one in a minute. I have tons of great memories from this super cool old stone farmhouse we rented back then.
I would have bb wars with my brother Chris in the house (we had hands full of bbs, and we would whip them at each other, while hiding behind furniture or ducking behind a wall.)🤷♀️
We had a record player upstairs, and I remember listening to Another One Bites the Dust over and over. *I still don’t actually know all the words to that song.
We had a yard sale once, and an elderly man was browsing through and he passed gas really loudly. Chris started cracking up, and told the guy he was remembering a cartoon he had just watched.😂 This house is where I first fell in love with the cartoon Thunder Cats, too.
We had this big barn behind the house, and the owner sold hay from it. I remember one time my dad pulled in, but he was actually there to buy hay.
We used to play in that barn All Day Long. There was a giant rope that hung from the very center, and we would swing on it to get from the higher hay bales to the lower, and vice versa. One time Chris was out there shooting bats or something with his bb gun pistol, and he wouldn’t throw the rope down to me so I could get up top… so I went and told on him. I came back out and said in a sing-song 8-year old voice, “Chriiiiis, mom wants yoooouuuu!” He turned around and shot me with his bb gun. Hit me right between the eyes. (Thank God!!) Man, if he wasn’t worried about being in trouble before- he sure was now!
But the memory that makes me catch my breath still, is how we played in those hay bales. We used to build tunnels in the hay bales, and we had a whole house made in there. The landlord’s daughter was older than us, and she would steal cigarettes from someone (dad? grandma?) and bring them to the barn to smoke with us. We would hide in the tunnels we built, and smoke cigarettes. We also used candles for light in the tunnels when we forgot the flashlight.
WHAT IN THE CRAP?!?!
I’m sure I’m not the only one who did something ridiculously foolish in our youth. At that age, we simply don’t have the life experience to understand the possible ramifications of our actions! I’m grateful all the things that COULD have happened during that time, didn’t, and I’m here to tell the story.🍀