Childhood Escapades

I was thinking this past week about funny things that have happened to me in my childhood, and I decided that I wanted to share some of them with you so that you could laugh too! :)

Bows & Arrows
For most of my childhood, from about age 5 til age 15, I lived in Michigan. In Michigan we had 20 ares of land--15 of woods and 5 of grass. Our house was planted somewhere in the middle-ish of those 5 acres. In fact, here's a picture for you:

To the west and south are portions of our 15 acre woods, but not all of them. To the immediate west of the house is a volleyball court, and the other plot just lower is a playground. To the east, the driveway extends all the way to the road where you see point "A".

Anyways... As children we would play outside all the time. On this particular day, my 2 brothers--Porter & Loran--and I were outside shooting bows and arrows around in the field. Aiming at random stuff and just having a good old time. Well.... being young, as we were, we weren't really very acquainted with "firearm" stuff and whatnot. That being known, here I am standing in the field just north of the house facing west when my brother--I think it was Porter, but I can't be sure anymore--shoots an arrow in my direction... Now, I don't think he was actually aiming for me, but that's what he hit! Yep! He HIT ME!!! Right smack in the chest too, on the right side. Luckily it didn't go in though. Thank goodness for using dull arrows!!! All that was left was a little round scar where it hit me, which ended up fading over the years. Oh man... what good times we had. Hahaha. :)

Ring of Fire

This is another incident that happened in Michigan. In fact I think everything I'm writing about happened there, so it's good I gave you a picture to be able to mentally see what's going on here! :) This one involved my brothers again... Go figure! Are you seeing a pattern here?
So there I was, standing just to the west of the driveway on the grass right next to the playground... when my brothers thought it would be funny to pour a huge circle of gasoline all around me on the ground and light it on fire!! I wish I could tell you how old I was during these happenings, but I honestly don't remember!! :S Anyways, so there you have me... Standing in the middle of a ring of fire... literally. I didn't know what to do! So i did the only logical thing...! No... I didn't just sit and wait out the flames, I wasn't patient enough for that! I ran and jumped through the flames to get out of the circle, making it out safely but losing a shoe in the process!!

I don't know what my brothers were thinking doing that to me, but it is fun to look back on!! :)

PORTER on Fire

Have you ever held fire in your hands?? If you haven't, it's a lot of fun! You should try it sometime. :) Just.... please be careful. ;)

Holding fire was something we really liked to do when we were younger, heck, I still like to do it occassionally!! ;P Anyways, the trick to holding fire (among others, i'm sure) is to use hand sanitizer. All you need to do is put a glob of it right smack on your palm and light it on fire! Now wait... before you try it, you need to know a couple of things... First, the trick only lasts a second or two.. So don't just sit there and watch it burn, or YOU will burn. Got it? You have to shake it out once you begin to feel the warmth reaching your skin. Second, make sure the sanitizer doesn't spread. Unless you want your whole hand to catch on fire, make sure it stays in a central spot on your palm (or wherever) and doesn't seep out.... THIS is where Porter comes in....

One night when we were playing with fire (I think we may have been little pyros, but i'm not sure...) ;) Porter decided to spread sanitizer up his arm as well... JUST to see what would happen. Oh brother........ Well, you may be able to guess what happened. Trying to shake out a little fire in your palm is one thing (it's easy!), but trying to shake your whole arm out is a completely different story... 8/

Porter's whole arm was up in flames and shaking wasn't doing any good. Just imagine someone with their whole arm on fire trying to shake it out.. Funny, huh? Well it may sound funny, but it was scary too there for a minute! I think what ended up happening is he had to stop, drop, and roll to get it out. We were all able to have a good laugh about that later.... Good times. :)

OKAY, well I still have a few more stories I wanted to tell, but this is getting rather long so I think I'll split it up and try to post the rest next time. :) Hope that's okay with you, cuz i'm doin' it anyway!!! Hahahaha.....

Oh, and to end the post, here's a picture of me from last fall that I retouched a little bit. Just thought I'd share!! :)

HI! :)