My Truck

My dad bought me a truck when I was 18, a Mazda B2200. It was the first automobile I had ever owned. He bought it for only $250 because every time it is stated it gave off a humongous smoke screen and covered the whole neighborhood. The body was in great shape and it had a grey metallic paint with metal flakes in.
The previous drive smoked cigars, so the interior had a yellowish film everywhere. The cigar residue took two days of scrubbing with full strength Pine sol to remove. All that the exterior needed was to be polished and waxed. My truck looked and smelled brand new by the time I was finished.
Then I added a new stereo with a speaker box that went the entire length of my cab right behind the seats. The radio was so loud that you could hear me coming a block away and with it cranked up it made my heart hurt. In the summer I would sit in the back of the truck and listen to music via the remote.
I was so excited to have my own truck that I would drive it everywhere. I was the oldest member of my group of friends so I always picked up everyone after school. I would usual have a big group of people gather around my truck to listen to the music after school. My friends and I would go cruising everywhere: the beach, the mall, and Seattle. Most of the time the cab was full of people and usually no less then ten people in back We could only go 15-20mph up hills the truck was so weighted down, but we didn’t care as long as the windows were down and the radio was up. I loved that little truck and I was broken hearted when I had to sell it years later. Out of all the vehicles I have owned my truck holds the dearest memories.

Tag

My friends and I loved to play tag in the forest that was near my house. We spent as much time as possible in the forest. The usually version of tag was not violence enough for us. In order to spice it up we used BB guns to tag the other person. We had only tow rules, no aiming for the face and we could only pump up the rifles 3 times.

One warm summer day Tom, Donny, Chris and I decided to go play tag. While wearing camouflage, we each loaded up with numerous pistols the occasional rifle. Every driver that passed on the street had the same surprised and slightly fearful expression. Laughing at the cars speeding up as they passed, we reached the forest.

Walking 10 minutes in the forest we reached our favorite spot. We began after a count of 20 seconds, to reach cover or to set up an ambush. Tom Donny and I planned before leaving to ambush the new guy, Chris. We had a spot all picked out, a heavily wooded area with plenty of under growth for cover. The trail dipped in that area so anyone in the trees had the high ground.

It was not long until Chris came cautiously up the trail. We could the puzzled look on his face, wondering why he could not hear any signs of combat. We used a three point attack pattern, forming a triangle and waited until he was in the center. Once Chris reached the prearranged spot we opened fire. Once the first barrage of BB’s hit there target we charged out of the underbrush towards Chris shouting war cries and banishing our riffles. He gave a shriek of fright and ran down the trail dropping his gun in the process. Dancing around his discarded weapon, we continued our war cries and began shaking our guns in that air like some nomadic tribe. We danced for a moment before slowly stopping, grins mischievously we pointed our rifles at each other, thus ending our agreement. Chris never got his gun back, so we used him for target practice. We spent the rest of the day and our ammo with a combination of hunting and ambushing everyone.

Looking back I am really surprised that no one lost an eye or worse our mom’s finding out what we were doing. I can sneak up on almost anyone thanks to the skills that I learned playing tag.

My Bike

One day my best friend Tom and I decided it was time for some mindless destruction. I had an old bike. Both of the tires were flat so we took them off. We began to ride it down the hill by Tom’s house on the rims. There were some sparks and we tipped over a lot, it was great. After a while of riding the bike we began to get bored. We stopped to take a moment to contemplate what to do. About the only time that we ever stopped to think was when we were trying to find something more stupid and dangerous to do. Having come up with a plan, we set to work. We took off both rims and tried pushing the bike down the hill. That brilliant idea only resulted in the bike flipping over. Scratching our heads and rubbing the bruises, we decided to put the front rim back on. With the front rim in place we would not have to worry about flipping over and we could attain a much higher speed…speed is good. I was sitting on the bike while Tom pushed the bike. We were surprised by how fast the bike went down the hill. It was very hard to control but we did not care. The sparks shooting off from the metal contacting the concrete almost set his shoes on fire. With this discovery only one word would suffice, cool. With a sort of Bevis and Butthead laugh included. We spent hours riding that bike down the hill. It is amazing how much metal melted off that bike. The part where the back tire was bolted on melted all the way off. That was the reason we finally stopped. We couldn’t go more then a foot before tipping over. To this day that hill still has tracks ground in the concrete from our day of destruction.

Impressing the girls

My friends and I were always ready and willing to impress the girls. We would use any means necessary to accomplish this, whether stunts, sports or stupidity. Once while riding my bike I passed a house that had about 4 very cute girls on the roof sunbathing. I was too shy to stop and talk to them. Instead I had the bright idea to impress them with my mad skills. On the way back around the block, I planned out my routine. Riding without hands… too easy, likewise riding the bike on one wheel did not seem adequate. I had the brilliant idea to combine the tricks, because that was sure to get me all of their phone numbers. I came down the street in high gear to make sure I had enough speed. Girls like speed right? As I came up to the promising location I went to work. First I pulled the bike up onto one wheel. That got their attention. While I had all the girls captivated I commenced the second phase of my plan. Dropping my hands to my sides I rode past the house. On the outside I was calm, as if this was an everyday occurrence. On the inside I knew this was going to hurt. The girls became ecstatic and stated whistling and cheering me on. I turned my head to bask in the glory. To my horror when I turned around again I was heading straight for a parked car. I did not have enough time to brake, but did not want to damage the car. So I took the only option left available to me, a controlled crash. I dropped the front wheel down even though it was at the wrong angle. This made the bike flip forward and me along with it. There I lay, tangled in the bike watching the clouds roll by. While in the background I hear hysterical laughter with the occasional request if I was still alive. At this point I was so embarrassed that I wish I had died, but alas the only thing I seriously hurt was my pride. To their concerns I offered a weak thumbs up. This brought a few cheers but was quickly drowned out by laughter. Picking up my bike, that now had a bent front wheel, I haphazardly rode home. It wasn’t until later that day I realized that I had forgotten something very important, the phone numbers. I learned a valuable lesson that day, next time I will just go up and talk to them.

My crazy childhood

This blog is about the many adventures that I had growing up. Most of the posts will be funny but occasionally I will toss in something stupid or dangerous that I survived. I will be posting various blogs and stories of growing up, whether about my friends, family or myself. There won’t be any order to these stories, just whatever one I happen to remember or find humorous at the time.

I had an interesting childhood being the youngest of three boys. There is a big age difference between my brothers and myself, 9 and 6 years. I was their assistant for all of their pranks but mostly the subject of those pranks. That is until I grew big enough to defend myself and began to develop my own friendships.

These friends assisted my calling of self destruction. Whether it was stick fighting, street hockey or even extreme cycling. My friends were there to encourage my reckless behavior.

This is a small taste of what it was like growing up. I will be posting the first of my series of adventures soon.