Gee Motox... and I thought we were bad when we used to have bottle rocket fights... we started using the ones with a report at the end and it got REAL interesting... So we switched to roman candles instead... You have to picture my buddies and I standing there in a circle laughing because we were all either on fire, or smoking afterwards... We all used our full faced helmets... well except the fat kid down the street that had one of those open faced ones with a bubble shield on it... and a ball from a Roman candle sort of got up inside the face shield and bounced around before it went down his neck and into his shirt.... Never seen a person strip that fast in all my life...

Of course he is the one who in welding class in highschool, always tucked his pants INTO his engineers boots.. and yup... a piece of slag dropped in and burned the crap out of his foot... we always felt sort of responsible for his less than a full deck disposition... we had talked him into relieving himself on an electric fence... and we thought we had gone and killed him... When the electricity him him, he stiffened up and fell forward like he was made of concrete.. still streaming fluids... needless to say, were we scared... not for him.. but for what our moms were going to do to us when they found out... He recovered.. well sort of... never was right after that though...

Then there was the lighting ourselves on fire trick that we used to do all the time... You pour some lighter fluid in your hand and light it off... then quickly tamp it out by clapping or something... all the boys thought it was cool.. until one mentally challenged kid on the next street over poured the whole can in his hand, down the arm, all over his clothes etc.. Well you know what happened there... thank god his dad was outside with the garden hose washing the car.

The rest of us just ran in every direction just in case we were being followed... We were not allowed to play with him after that... Although we used to get dirty looks from his mom and dad at the cub scout pack meetings after that... But after I got kicked out of Cubscouts... I sort of lost track of him... Uh yeah, I sort of cussed the pack leader out one night... in front of everyone... Oh did I tell you it was my dad? Oh man did I get it after that... and the other kid's mothers would point their fingers at me and wisper to each other when I walked past their houses... I guess I was the kid the girl's mothers would warn them about.... and I was the good kid... I won't go into may brother's escapades, but suffice to say, mom liked me best.

YUP, ol' Dragginbutt has been around...

 

LIke I said before, I grew up prior to ATV's being on the market.. so we had a go-kart to play with. Now this go cart was special, because the clutch was dead. It was basically a direct drive unit. We had to put it up on a block of wood, then we would have someone else pull the rope to start it while we sat in the seat with the throttle wide open. After it started, we would drop it off the wood and burn out down the street. Easy when you had two people.. but when you were alone, almost impossible... Well, I had learned how to do it by myself... and had done it many times... so one winter day, I decided to go and do some donuts on the road in front of our house, so I started that puppy up.. well because it was winter, and I had been doing this in days prior.. the throttle cable was stuck wide open.. When I started it, it revved up to a bazillion RPM and I grabbed for the kill switch, which I missed.. but not before knocking it off the wooden block... and it took off screaming at max RPM with me being pulled on my belly as I struggled to hold on to the back axle shaft. Well eventually I let go.. and then chased the go-kart around the neighbor's field for what seemed 10 minutes or so... It would go in circles around me.. taunting me every step of the way.. I'd get close to it, and it would accelerate away... Well we did this little dance for a while, then the guy on the next block came to his back door to see what the heck was going on... and I swear to God, that once the Go-kart got sight of him standing there in his back door, it made a beeline at max speed for him...

It must have been going a hundred miles an hour when it hit the back door and exploded through it and down the basement stairs... I came running up all out of breath and all I could say was I am sorry about a million times.... The man was very nice about it... he helped me pull it back up the stairs, and push it home.... When my dad, the Army General came home.. he never said a word... just went over and paid the man for the damages... He never did say a single word about it... Today he is nearly 80 and still has not commented on that day... I don't know if he is mad or doesn't say anything for fear he is going to laugh himself to death... But boy did my mom have a few words on the subject all prepared for just such an occasion... I swear she must have stayed up all night writing hour long speeches that she knew someday she would get a chance to use on my brother and I..... and we sure kept her busy writing them too... Never did get a repeat either...