Family Relationships

Family Relationships can be some of the most trying, difficult, draining, and hard to manage relationships there are out there, but they can also be some of the most fulfilling and rewarding relationships of one's life.  You are born into your family, you don't get to choose it.  These relationships can be the most difficult because you can't just end these relationships, especially when you are younger (although in very extreme situations, ending the relationship can be a last resort).  You typically won't want to see any family relationships end, because family ties can be some of the strongest ties there are.

This section will be dedicated to discussing all topics relating to those (sometimes a little crazy) people you call your family, and I suspect there will be quite a lot discussed here!

My Personal Story: Part 2 - Sneaking Out: The School Adventure

     When we last left off, I was telling you how as me and my best friend Matt got older, we started sneaking out of the house when we would stay the night with each other.  This time I want to tell you about one of the craziest adventures Matt and I ever had (I had even crazier adventures later on sneaking out with other friends and family) while sneaking out.

    

     One night in particular, we decided to walk all the way to our elementary school, which was over a mile down the winding 2-lane roads of our little town between the mountains.  We had placed pencils under the windows in one of the classrooms before leaving Friday for the weekend, so the window looked shut and locked but was actually still open.  The plan was to sneak into the school over the weekend.  See, I had been talking back and forth with a cute girl from our school, and had talked her into meeting us at the school that night as long as we came to her house to get her.  Of course, I had all kinds of crazy ideas as to what this meant; as a seventh grader at the time, the furthest I had gotten with any girl was a quick kiss on the lips, and I thought this was going to be my chance to really step up from that!  Earlier in the day, Matt and I had come across some old Michelob (which we thought read as "Mitchell Bob") bottles his dad must have forgotten about leaving in his work shop in the large garage at their house, and we had stashed it away outside to take along with us on our adventure.  We did our usual routine, with all black outfits and uber stealth, but at Matt's house leaving through his bedroom window was not an option, so we always had to sneak out the back door of his house.  As a secondary precaution and our last line of defense, just in case his parents were to wake up and decide to check in on us, we placed a combination of pillows and toys under the bedsheets that looked surprisingly similar to us when we were actually in the bed.  We covered the head area just enough to make it look like we had just pulled the sheets up over our heads a bit.  Finally we threw our BB guns over our shoulders, slipped quietly out the back door, and went on our long journey to the school.  

     We tried to avoid leaping into the ditch since we were supposed to be meeting a girl, so we avoided walking along the road whenever we could; sometimes walking along the creek bank, other times sneaking across yards or walking along the tree line at the base of the mountains.  Finally we reached the school, and the girl lived just up a hollow next to it.  The plan was to call her from inside the school once we got there so she could be watching for us to show up at her house (bear in mind this is 1997, there were no cell phones, especially for kids).  We opened the window and climbed into the classroom.  We knew there was a phone in the lunch room kitchen, and it was right next to the classroom we were in.  We went over there and made the call, and she actually answered!  At this point I got kind of nervous; I thought "oh man, this is actually gonna happen!"  But she had apparently gotten nervous too and said she was too afraid to try to sneak out of her house, something about her dad still being awake.  To say I was let down would be an understatement... Luckily in true best friend fashion Matt came up with some things to do to cheer me up and make sure the night was not a total waste.  We decided since we were already in the school, we should do some things that we would never be able to do normally in the classroom.  We popped open our "Mitchell Bob's" and started to drink, and quickly we found out how bitter beer can taste, especially when it is really old and not refrigerated.  We weren't sure what beer was supposed to taste like anyway, but it was so bad we decided to get into the huge cooler in the lunch room and chased it with milk out of those little singles boxes that you used to get at school!  I know, I know, just thinking about it now makes me sick; but we didnt' know any better and it actually did seem to help up get it down.  We decided to turn on the TV in the classroom and put it on MTV, since that is also something we would never normally be able to do.  After watching TV and drinking the milk-beer combo for a while, we decided to go check out the girls' restroom since we had never seen it before and this would probably be our only chance to do so.  The boys' restroom was always pretty nasty, especially since some of the other boys would regularly hold contests to see who could pee over the top of the stalls or who could spit their loogies the highest on the wall and make it stick the longest (pretty gross, I know).  We thought the girl's bathroom would probably be cleaner than the boys, but apart from that we really didn't know what to expect.  

     We paused for a moment at the door to the hallway, because we knew that there were some kind of motion detectors out there that would surely pick us up if they were running.  After a short debate on whether or not the motion detectors were just for show, we decided that since our school was probably the poorest in the county, it was highly unlikely that they could afford a real security system; and so we stepped out into the hallway reluctantly.  We stepped out into the middle of the hallway, half expecting to hear some enormously loud alarm to go off, but all remained quiet.  We started walking down the hallway towards the girls' bathroom while we discussed what to do if it was a silent alarm and saw cops or anyone else pulling into the school. We decided that the smartest way to escape would be to run out the back doors where we could run through a gate in the outer fence and we would almost be to the creek, and relative safety, from there.  After what seemed like forever, we finally made our way to the girls' bathroom door.  We slowly pushed the door open, it creaked slightly as it started to move.  Then we saw it in all it's glory, the girls' bathroom!  Instead of dull blue and covered in pee and mucus, the walls were pink and spotless.  They had actual mirrors above their sinks! I mean, the main reason we didn't have mirrors was because someone would break them within a week every time we got new ones, so I guess they finally gave up on it completely.  And in place of the horse trough looking multi-person urinal we had, the girls had all stalls.  Each toilet was in immaculate condition, along with the floor, surely due in part to the lack of females having the ability to pee in any direction, and likely also due to the fact that most girls at the school were much more mature that the boys.  After giving  the bathroom a good look-over and relieving ourselves in neighboring stalls, we decided to move on and find something else we could get into that we would not normally be able to do at school.

      This time we decided the only other things we could do were things outside the building, so we cleaned up any evidence that we were ever there and climbed back out the window the same way we came in.  We knew of a certain spot where there is a low roof that we could probably boost each other up to and be able to get on top of the building.  Parents and teachers would sometimes use this spot to climb onto the roof to retrieve balls and other things that got stuck up there.  So, Matt boosted me up onto the low roof and I proceeded to then pull him up, and there we were on the school rooftop with not much of an idea of what we were going to do or why we were even up there.  We decided to look around and saw that there really wasn't much to see up there besides a bunch of small pipes sticking out of the roofing, so we decided to just sit up there for a bit and try to finish the last bottle of "Mitchell Bob".  After a good 20 minutes of effort along with some target practice on a nearby street light, we had finally finished off the last of the old warm beer, and as a final act of defiance tossed the empty bottle down one of the many pipes jutting out from the roofing.  It dropped for only a fraction of a second then we heard it smash into a million pieces. 
     We were finally ready to drop down from the rooftop and make our way back home.  We got down without incident and started heading back up the long road to Matt's house.  On the way back, we were less worried about getting dirty so we stuck to the road and jumped into the ditch when any cars came by.  The morning dew was starting to accumulate, and we could feel it slowly soaking into our clothes.  We brought a couple of the single serving milk cartons with us as a souvenir of our adventure, and we had planned to keep them until we passed by the school bully's house and saw he had left his car windows down (yes he was old enough to drive in 8th grade, probably part of the reason for his bullying looking back on it).  We sheepishly grinned while we opened the cartons and poured the milk into the cloth seats of his car, all the time thinking of all the mean and terrible things he had done and said to us and many other students over the years.  It wasn't enough milk to really soak the seats, but it would definitely leave a good stink in there if left in the heat of the day.  After we'd finished getting our revenge, we hurried home as quickly as we could.  
     We came upon Matt's yard and snuck across the wet grass as quietly as we could.  As we crept across the yard, our hearts dropped.  The kitchen lights came on!  We scrambled to get out of sight, hoping it was just his sister getting a midnight snack.  As we approached the side of the house, yet another light came on!  Needless to say, we were really freaking out now; no way his sister would be walking around turning all the lights on in the middle of the night... We quickly passed around the garage to the back side of the house, hoping that maybe we could slip in before they reached the living room and just pretend we had been there the whole time.  The light was still off, so we quickly discarded our BB guns under the back porch and approached the door.  Just as Matt reached for the handle, the living room light came on!  If we weren't kids then, I would say we would have had a full on heart attack right then and there.  We heard the door handle jiggle, then start to turn.  We thought to quickly kick off our shoes so we could act like we had just been sitting on the back porch talking or something.  Just as we kicked the shoes over the edge of the porch, the door started to open.  The light was so bright, we were blinded for a moment as it opened.  Our eyes began to adjust, and we could see a figure in the door...

     And that is all the time we have for this post!  Haha, I know, I hate cliffhangers too; but I thought this would be a great time to end this post and a great place to begin the next one!  I hope you enjoyed reading, and I hope you will definitely be awaiting the next post.  Was it just Matt's sister being nosy?  Was it his parents and our lives are over?  You'll find out very soon!!!  Don't forget to share the links to these posts with your friends and associates, and thanks again for spending some time with me listening to my life story!

My Personal Story: Part 1 - Childhood Trouble-Making and Funny Stories

     My story is a long and complex one, so I have decided to break it up into several parts.  I grew up in a rural town about 20 minutes away from anything resembling a city, so I spent a lot of time outdoors.  I enjoyed playing in the streams behind my house, fishing, riding ATVs and motorcycles (I started riding a tiny ATV when I was 2 years old, but it had a safety string so if I got too far ahead of my parents the string came off and cut the engine), and playing sports like baseball, basketball, and football with my friends, as well as my two younger sisters.
     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!!!