I was the eldest of my parents' three children, and I was also the only boy. Of course, my sisters and I did not always get along, and I grew quite skilled at blocking kicks, dodging bites and scratches, and their favorite; the ole' kick to the groin. One time, my oldest sister and I were playing and accidentally knocked over my mother's favorite vase. The fall chipped a small part off the main vase, and broke the cap right down the middle; we knew we were in for it then. Along came my younger sister, and we decided to try to trick her into taking the blame. We told her "Look! Look! We broke open mom's vase!!! I'm going to go tell her first!" She immediately ran off as fast as she could so she could tell mom she "opened" the vase first! We couldn't believe it worked, and we knew she wouldn't get in any real trouble, whereas we would almost certainly get a spanking and grounded... so we didn't feel all that bad about it. But my little sister's face when she realized mom was mad at her instead of proud was absolutely priceless. There are a ton of equally funny stories I could also tell about me and my sisters' shenanigans, so perhaps I will make a different series of posts telling some of those stories at some point as well...
Growing up, I had many peers I could call friends, but Matt was certainly my best friend; he was also my distant cousin. We played together all the time and got into all kinds of fun together (a lot of that fun was causing trouble and doing things we knew we were not supposed to). Each year on Memorial Day, we had a small family reunion at my house and my aunt's house next door. It was always a lot of fun; I had several cousins that were my age so we always played together, and we had a pool, plus all the games we set up for the event like badminton, horseshoes, whiffle ball, kick ball, etc. We also had a treehouse in our back yard with a jungle gym connected to it, and we had the creek out back if we ever got bored with the pool. When I was about 7 or 8, we had decided to play actual baseball instead of whiffle ball. We played with a regular baseball and metal bats (a big mistake, in hindsight). I was ready for my turn, and started walking to the plate when I noticed Matt was already standing there with bat in hand. Before I could react, I saw the pitcher throw the ball and Matt begin to swing his bat...and that was the last thing I remembered. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground and looked over to see dad leap over the pool fence like an Olympic gold medalist! He was to me literally in a heartbeat and picked me up and rushed me into the house. I remember laying on the kitchen table; above me all I could see was the faces of all the adults looking me over and talking. I ended up being taken to the hospital and earned 3 stitches on my temple from the incident, and we never played actual baseball on Memorial Day again... Oddly enough, the very next year we were all playing by the creek throwing rocks into the stream. Matt picked up a rather large rock and attempted to throw it into the creek, but neglected to notice my oldest sister Tiffany out in front of him a ways. He threw the rock far too low, and it cracked my sister right in the back of the head; nearly knocking her out. She escaped without needing stitches, but had a nice big knot on her head for a few days from the hit. Matt was branded "The Hit Man", and we have never let him live it down, even to this day we remind him of it every Memorial Day.
As we got older, Matt and I got into more troublesome antics. We started getting bored just playing in our rooms all night when we had our little sleepovers, and began sneaking out of the house long after our parents had gone to bed. Most of the time, we just went walking up and down the road, and would dive into the ditch whenever a car approached (yes, I don't know how I'm still alive either). We went all out with it too; donned all black outfits with hoods or black toboggans, black shoes and socks, and even black gloves when we had them. We also tried to be as stealthy as possible; at my house we would exit through my bedroom window, and because the top half of the window would try to drop as soon as we unlocked the window, we had to prop it open with a sword I had bought years past on vacation at Medieval Times. The bottom part of the window would stay in place once we lifted it up, but also made a loud creaking sound as it was being lifted up. To ensure maximal stealth, we turned the air conditioner fan from automatic to on so the sound of the vents would help cover up any sounds we made. We also placed towels against the bottom of my bedroom door and covered the entire door by hanging a light blanket over it using thumb tacks in the hopes that this would further muffle any sounds we were making (what I would give to have that kind of energy now...). We also started taking our BB guns with us in case we ran into a wild animal of some sort, but we only ended up using them to shoot out street lights or practice shooting trees.
There were several really close calls and crazy things we ended up doing during our sneaking out phase; not the smartest things we could ever do, but they do make for really good stories now. Since it would take way too long to tell those stories in one post, I'm going to tell a few of them of the next few posts so you're not stuck reading one 3 hour long post lol. I hope you've enjoyed this so far, it was really fun to write and reminisce about my childhood! If you enjoy this you will probably love hearing the stories I will tell next, so please share these posts with your friends and anyone in your circles you think would enjoy them! Thank you for reading!!!
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