Things We Did

[Rusty]

Phil mentioned something in another topic about doing stupid things, and I thought I would start a topic on it.

This is something that was told to me by my dad...I was four years old at the time, and good old pops had been in the hospital for a hernia operation. Being four years old and doing things that four year old boys do, dad walked through the door just from the hospital. So, I do what I always did when he walked into the house, I run to him and punch him in the belly. Mom said, that if dad hadn't fell to the floor in pain, I would have no longer been on Gods green earth. He had to turn around and return to the hospital, something about new stitches.

He returned the favor 6 years later. I was holding one of the two ladders that dad had used to build a scaffold to paint the uppermost part of the gable. It was early in the morning and cool with a lot of dew on the ground. After he made it to the 12' 2x12 that was spanning the two ladders, I noticed things were moving pretty good. So I move away from ladder and tell pops, he's on his own. He said a few choice words and informed to hold the ladder. I no more than had my hands on the ladder and look up, and see things that were not where they were not supposed to be at. Mainly the 2x12. The corner of it hit right on the hair line on my forehead. I never passed out, but I did inform dad that I told you so. Dad said he had never seen so much blood in his life. 10 stitches later and a freaky hair cut, all was well. Dad never put the scaffolding back up, he used the extension ladder to finish up.

[Al Agnew]

Closest I ever came to drowning...

Sometime in my early teens, 13 or 14, I was wading Big River with my best fishing buddy. We came to a pool that we knew was too deep to wade from bank to bank. High banks on both sides. Lots of thick brush and itchweed (stinging nettle) on the banks. We knew all this because we had fished it plenty of times before, and suffered each time trying to go around that pool through that brush. So this time, we decided we'd swim it instead. So we take off our tennies, tie the shoelaces together, and wrap them around our necks. Put our fishing rods in our teeth, and start swimming. Now, my buddy was having no trouble making headway, but the stupidest thing I kinda didn't take into consideration was that I also had a stringer of sunfish and the insides to a minnow bucket tied around my waist. So I wasn't going anywhere fast, but I still figured I could make it, after all, it was only 100 feet or so.

About 50 feet, at the exact point of no return, I realized I was in trouble. I glubbed a bit and shouted to my buddy that I had to get the bucket off my waist. Took a halfway decent breath and slowly sank while I tried to get it off. Hit the bottom at about 10 feet, and couldn't get it off. Pushed off the bottom, made it to the surface, took a hurried breath and began to sink again. This time I reached the bottom but I was out of breath and no dice getting the bucket loose in my semi-panic. Made it to the surface one more time, choking on water this time, and sank again, figuring this was my last chance to get the bucket off...my buddy was swimming toward me, but he had taken the time to dump his fishing rod and shoes on the bank before turning back and I didn't think he could get to me in time. The bucket was still attached, and just as I was getting pretty sure I wasn't going to make it--funny thing is all I could think about was how mad Mom and Dad were going to be at me for drowning--I felt a submerged limb, which I happened to know was attached to a tree that was attached to the bank. I was able to pull myself up that tree limb and to the bank, coughing an choking and having swallowed a gallon or so of water by the time I got my head to the surface.

[Trav]

Stupid things we did...hmmmm

got married

got divorced

Wich is worse in your book?..Haha

[zander]

I could write a long book full of all the stupid things I have done, but one of the dumbest happened when I was 16 or 17. At that time I had been living in Louisiana for about 9 years after moving down from Kimberling. I had plenty of friends and we loved to hunt. I lived at the end of a subdivision and beyond that were vast cotton fields. The cotton fields were great places for us to go hunt doves and when doves weren't in season, we would shoot blackbirds since they tasted the same as dove and there was open season year-round. I had invited one of my friends over to go hunting with me and I had asked him to bring a shotgun for me. His family duck hunted so they had pump shotguns whereas my dad had only single shot ones. As my friend arrived he took the Mossberg 20 gauge out of the gun sleeve and handed it to me. I stood around in the driveway of my house with the hot sun beating down on me while my friend stood about six feet in front of me putting shells in his other shotgun. I felt the gun start to slip in my sweaty hand and I tightened my grip on the gun and then BOOM! The gun I was holding went off. It was pointed towards my friends feet but thankfully it missed him by a foot or so. The No. 6 shot left a white patch of blasted concrete driveway before it ricochetted up to my father's right rear tire on his minivan. It peppered it I guess because as the neighbors came out of their houses to investigate and we started to come out of shock, the tire slowly deflated. Guns should not be kept loaded and the safety should be kept on and you should check it yourself REGARDLESS of what you are told about the gun. Oh yeah, one of my neighbors was not too fond of me to begin with came out with to see what was happening. He was a cop and probably thought there was a crime in progress. Thankfully the only physical damage was my dad's tire that I had to replace.

[Rusty]

Mom...Dear ole mom. She has always been a clean freak when it came to the house. At a young age, I began to have an interest in cooking. One morning, when I was 12, I decided to fix some hotcakes. Mom always had the syrup in the fridge in one of those nice glass syrup containers. After fixing the hotcakes, I get the syrup out of the fridge and put it on the stove top over a very low fire. I get the urge to go the restroom, when I am halfway back to the kitchen, I here a pop. It sounded like a small caliber handgun going off. When I get into the kitchen, I see right off that I was in some big, big trouble. I have never, in my whole life, seen a mess, like syrup can make, when it explodes on the kitchen stove top. There was syrup everywhere. On the ceiling, on the cabinets, everywhere. I had four hours to clean this up and I took full advantage of the whole four hours. I learned from this, that I was never going to kill someone, because there is never a way to clean everything up. If my mom could find it, someone more trained in the field of collecting evidence surely could. Did I mention my mom would have made a good evidence collector. It took 10 minutes before she noticed that something wasn't right. I played dumb, but I was busted none the less. There was syrup on the back side of the refrigerator handle. Now, how in the world could that have gotten there, since it is directly across from the stove a good 8 ft. Then there was the problem with the burners not working on the stove. She had been thinking about getting a new stove anyway. If she could have beat me with the broom, she couldn't find because I hid it, she would have. Instead, I was given a mom look that wasn't the I will always love because you are my son look. I tried helping her, but she told me to go to Aunt Dixie's house for a while. Aunt Dixie's house? The one that lives in Oregon? Mom still lives in the same house we did when I was growing up in Oklahoma.

You know, every time this is brought up, she still doesn't laugh as hard as I do. Even though she did get a new stove out of it.