Harmless Fun

I feel like summer hasn’t even started yet.  This is the first June since I was 7 that I didn’t play golf, probably the first June ever that I never went to the pool just for fun, and also the first June in which the most exciting thing I did was drive to Grove City, Pennsylvania to film a dance recital for 224 Productions. 

I wrote that last sentence as a joke but unfortunately had to think for a second of something that was better.  Thinking about it though, I really did have a great time on the ride back.  Brent and I talked about many things, but my favorite happened to be the topic of what we did with our friends when we were young for what we called “harmless fun.”  “Harmless fun” was defined as something you did that you definitely shouldn’t have been doing, but really couldn’t get in too much trouble for, and if your parents knew about it (especially our respective pairs) they would act super mad but really would be thinking inside “thank God they are doing that and not shrooms” and would make you apologize to people or something embarrassing.

Anyway, we told of TPing and the usual mischief, but Brent and I both brought to the table one specific act that neither neighborhood gang thought up themselves…    

Brent and his buddies carried on the tradition of taking a pick up truck around town and piling up yard waste bags full of leaves into the bed.  They would then take all of the bags and rip them open in the middle of someone’s front yard.  I know everyone reading this is thinking, “how awful that would be to wake up and look out and see all of that, let alone pick it all up.”  Exactly right, AWFUL.  The tradition I speak of though is due to Brent’s first experience with this being picking up the leaves when a group of his father’s football players did it to his house when he was a kid.  This certainly doesn’t condone the behavior, but c’mon, it’s hilarious to think about. 

I then told the story of “dead homies.”  My friend’s parents used to stuff a pair of jeans and flannel shirt full of leaves and put a pumpkin head on them to make a dummy for the front porch at Halloween time.  We borrowed the dummy, replaced the pumpkin with a duct taped group of newspapers and a ball cap, and also taped an old pair of tennis shoes on him, then named the dummy “Dre.”  We would take Dre down to the bottom of High Point hill and place him under a streetlight just off of the road face down with an overturned bicycle laying next to him.  We would hide back in a wooded area about 30 yards from the road and roar laughing each time someone would come to a very concerned stop only to realize it was just Dre.  Another AWFUL act, something that would probably be frowned upon, but now that it is over and done with, again I say c’mon that’s hilarious to think about. 

Yes both stories are silly, immature little things we used to do.  However, they provided a million laughs then, and also got us back from Grove City, PA in good spirit. 

Disclaimer:  Please do not attempt either scenario.

Until next time,