Growing up in a rural setting, one tends to have experiences that are not the average for the regular city kids. Here's one that always makes my Mom tear up with laughter whenever she has to tell it. I'm thinking from an adult perspective it seems quite a bit funnier than when I was 4. At 4, this was serious business.
I'm playing outside on the lawn, we had a lawn that was a few acres back then so there was a lot of room. My Dad was home and working in the garage. Every so often I could hear a few interesting words and the sound of a wrench or a hammer falling on metal. I thought this would be a perfect time to go tell my Dad I was home and see what he was up to. Sometimes, Dad would give me a hammer, a box of nails, and point me in the direction of his scrap woodpile and tell me some random thing he decided it would be imperative that I build for him right away. Dad was no dummy. He knew how to keep me busy for hours.
I'm outside building a bridge for the duck pond we had yet to build, with 2" x 6" scrap bits of spruce... this bridge was going to take a while. When I look up from my intensive labors, my middle sister ( I have 4 older sisters ) is standing there glaring down like she has the most dire news to impart to me. She informs me that the ant bait in the little round can, just behind me is poison and if I touch it, I am taking a trip to "The Happy Hunting Grounds". That means dead for those of you not familiar with Bugs Bunny trivia. I give her my most annoyed look my four year old attitude can muster and continue on with my work. What seemed like a few hours later (but at 4 how long could that really have been, maybe 15 minutes?) I am bored with my task, I'm guessing Engineering was not in my future at this point, and I decide to hop across the double wide opening for the swinging barn doors on the garage. In the middle of aforementioned garage door threshold, is a 2 inch round can of ant bait. As I am swinging on the doors and jumping as far as my little four year old legs can carry me, my fingers lose their grip on the big wooden door and I slip. My tiny toes landed on the little can of death and as nimble as Baryshnikov, I leaped back on to the door and stole a glance at my Dad to see if he noticed. He was busy fighting with some contraption or another that he was building. My super brain started to digest the facts, I was swinging from the garage doors, probably that alone would be frowned upon by everyone for starters. I landed on the can of ant bait, granted it was only for a second and I was wearing socks, thick sturdy farm boots, and don't forget the really cool welding goggles that my Dad let me borrow... Lol! But still, I TOUCHED the can of ant bait. I quickly came to the conclusion that I was on my way to the happy hunting grounds. I must have turned 50 shades of white in a short amount of time as I dragged my dying feet across the yard and into the house to say goodbye to my Mom and wait for the end to come. Would it be slow? Would it be fast? How will I know when I'm dead? All these things were playing through my head as I slowly took off my boots at the kitchen screen door, hugged my Mom while she was baking bread, and went to lie down on the sofa and wait for my last breath.
A short time went by and my Mom's 'spidey senses' were tingling that something was up so she felt a look was in order. She walks into the living room, and there I am. Lying on my back on the sofa, stiff as a board. The blanket my Great Aunty had knit tucked up tight under my little chin, my arms crossed solemnly across my sobbing chest. My face was white as a sheet, now Mom didn't know the story yet so she's wondering if I did something bad and am worried about getting in trouble.
She comes over to ask what I did and in my littlest voice, I burst into tears and strangled out that I was going to "The Happy Hunting Grounds" and then between broken sobs, a lot of sniffling, and questions, I managed to squeak out my story of the swinging on the doors, the ant bait, the happy hunting grounds, the slipping from the door onto the ant bait, ( might I add that even back then it was a childproof container). You would have had to #1 shake it pretty seriously to get any of the bait to fall out of the teeny little holes made only for ants to crawl into. #2 you'd have to ingest a serious amount of the microscopic pellets to even get something more than a little upset stomach. So here I am totally destroyed by my perilous predicament, and my poor mother is trying to keep a straight face. At one point, I think she left the room to get some tissues for me and I could have sworn she was snorting while trying not to laugh too loud from the other room. Having already raised 4 curious and often precocious daughters, this must have been somewhat of 'old hat' for her. Maybe not quite so dramatic though.
I had totally forgotten that old story by the next day until one day, a few years back, my family was all together. My Mom decided she had to tell this story ( before she had the stroke ) She was laughing so hard in the retelling, she could barely get out the words. With everyone watching her laugh so hard, they of course started laughing too. Not so much from the story as Mom was quite hysterical, she was barely making sense, but from her enjoyment at the comical sight of 4 year old me with my arms crossed as if in my casket already. Eventually, when the laughter died down, and I crawled out from behind the sofa, everyone in the room had seriously exhausted themselves from the comedy routine and new stories were remembered and the retelling of those brought out more hilarity and jovial kinship. The bonds of family healed over laughter, old wounds cleansed of scarring by a new adulthood version of a child's folly. Seeing yourself as a child through your own adult eyes can be quite cathartic.
There are hundreds more stories and time to tell them all so don't forget to check your Compass!
Cole
I'm playing outside on the lawn, we had a lawn that was a few acres back then so there was a lot of room. My Dad was home and working in the garage. Every so often I could hear a few interesting words and the sound of a wrench or a hammer falling on metal. I thought this would be a perfect time to go tell my Dad I was home and see what he was up to. Sometimes, Dad would give me a hammer, a box of nails, and point me in the direction of his scrap woodpile and tell me some random thing he decided it would be imperative that I build for him right away. Dad was no dummy. He knew how to keep me busy for hours.
I'm outside building a bridge for the duck pond we had yet to build, with 2" x 6" scrap bits of spruce... this bridge was going to take a while. When I look up from my intensive labors, my middle sister ( I have 4 older sisters ) is standing there glaring down like she has the most dire news to impart to me. She informs me that the ant bait in the little round can, just behind me is poison and if I touch it, I am taking a trip to "The Happy Hunting Grounds". That means dead for those of you not familiar with Bugs Bunny trivia. I give her my most annoyed look my four year old attitude can muster and continue on with my work. What seemed like a few hours later (but at 4 how long could that really have been, maybe 15 minutes?) I am bored with my task, I'm guessing Engineering was not in my future at this point, and I decide to hop across the double wide opening for the swinging barn doors on the garage. In the middle of aforementioned garage door threshold, is a 2 inch round can of ant bait. As I am swinging on the doors and jumping as far as my little four year old legs can carry me, my fingers lose their grip on the big wooden door and I slip. My tiny toes landed on the little can of death and as nimble as Baryshnikov, I leaped back on to the door and stole a glance at my Dad to see if he noticed. He was busy fighting with some contraption or another that he was building. My super brain started to digest the facts, I was swinging from the garage doors, probably that alone would be frowned upon by everyone for starters. I landed on the can of ant bait, granted it was only for a second and I was wearing socks, thick sturdy farm boots, and don't forget the really cool welding goggles that my Dad let me borrow... Lol! But still, I TOUCHED the can of ant bait. I quickly came to the conclusion that I was on my way to the happy hunting grounds. I must have turned 50 shades of white in a short amount of time as I dragged my dying feet across the yard and into the house to say goodbye to my Mom and wait for the end to come. Would it be slow? Would it be fast? How will I know when I'm dead? All these things were playing through my head as I slowly took off my boots at the kitchen screen door, hugged my Mom while she was baking bread, and went to lie down on the sofa and wait for my last breath.
A short time went by and my Mom's 'spidey senses' were tingling that something was up so she felt a look was in order. She walks into the living room, and there I am. Lying on my back on the sofa, stiff as a board. The blanket my Great Aunty had knit tucked up tight under my little chin, my arms crossed solemnly across my sobbing chest. My face was white as a sheet, now Mom didn't know the story yet so she's wondering if I did something bad and am worried about getting in trouble.
She comes over to ask what I did and in my littlest voice, I burst into tears and strangled out that I was going to "The Happy Hunting Grounds" and then between broken sobs, a lot of sniffling, and questions, I managed to squeak out my story of the swinging on the doors, the ant bait, the happy hunting grounds, the slipping from the door onto the ant bait, ( might I add that even back then it was a childproof container). You would have had to #1 shake it pretty seriously to get any of the bait to fall out of the teeny little holes made only for ants to crawl into. #2 you'd have to ingest a serious amount of the microscopic pellets to even get something more than a little upset stomach. So here I am totally destroyed by my perilous predicament, and my poor mother is trying to keep a straight face. At one point, I think she left the room to get some tissues for me and I could have sworn she was snorting while trying not to laugh too loud from the other room. Having already raised 4 curious and often precocious daughters, this must have been somewhat of 'old hat' for her. Maybe not quite so dramatic though.
I had totally forgotten that old story by the next day until one day, a few years back, my family was all together. My Mom decided she had to tell this story ( before she had the stroke ) She was laughing so hard in the retelling, she could barely get out the words. With everyone watching her laugh so hard, they of course started laughing too. Not so much from the story as Mom was quite hysterical, she was barely making sense, but from her enjoyment at the comical sight of 4 year old me with my arms crossed as if in my casket already. Eventually, when the laughter died down, and I crawled out from behind the sofa, everyone in the room had seriously exhausted themselves from the comedy routine and new stories were remembered and the retelling of those brought out more hilarity and jovial kinship. The bonds of family healed over laughter, old wounds cleansed of scarring by a new adulthood version of a child's folly. Seeing yourself as a child through your own adult eyes can be quite cathartic.
There are hundreds more stories and time to tell them all so don't forget to check your Compass!
Cole
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