What could be worse than getting pissed on?
At age twelve, I found something worse. Waay worse.
My shameful lack of awareness as that youngster and right up to my current oldsterism still sometimes makes me want to vomit.
Especially since most of my life I walked around believing myself to be very unlucky while truly not understanding my impact on people or the incredibly dangerous situations I created.
I put many human lives in jeopardy and am so very, very fortunate that no one was killed or seriously injured. At least, not physically…
Like this time:
When Yer IN Showers Stop Working
As a young boy I noticed that the other kids around me were aimless. They often lamented that they were bored and there was nothing to do.
I seldom had a problem thinking of of things we could do. Fun things. Exciting even.
“How about let’s start a bicycle club?!” I inquired of my young comrades. “It’ll be fun! We can go on overnight trips with Playboy books, flashlights and food, build too tall ramps and have jumping and wheely contests and we’ll even set up races to see who is the fastest biker every week!”
Kids loved the idea of starting a bike club and before long we had every boy in the neighborhood signed up as a member.
That’s when I learned a tough lesson about the law of diminishing return.
See, up to now potential members of the club were goaded into running through a chaotic yellow fluid corridor built by made members for initiation rites but as soon as we counted twenty little members in our club, that became a pile of pee to not breathe in while attempting to charge through so I was forced to come up with an alternate method of hazing potentates.
That’s when the epiphany hit me that we were standing directly atop the solution!
Just Kids Getting Tanked
The tanker!
We would drop initiates into the tanker, the top of which had previously been our pissing platform and watch the unluckies flail around in the two or more inches of tar waiting patiently at the bottom to cover them in stinky goop.
By sticking my head through one of the top portholes I could see that the entire inside of the 24 foot long tank was covered in nasty, five year old crude oil but it was that gooey bottom layer of slickery muck that made our initiation plan so enticing.
We wondered who in their right mind would endure such a crazy thing?
Every paid up member who peered into the “hell hole” tank cavern was glad they just had to dash through an ugly piss storm because these newbies were going to face something more insane and mark leaving than a twisty golden shower.
It was during our third use of this scary and freaking hilarious method of male bonding that Old Orville Reum, the junkyard and tanker owner, came screaming toward us waving his dirty old fedora in one hand and scratching out an air message from Hades with the other.
We damn near weren’t able to hoist our slippery newest member out in time to skedaddle before the long white haired madman reached our location.
In prognosticating post event once our arses were safely back in my basement bedroom, we agreed that our last initiate had made the most noise of anyone during his horror filled few seconds in the gaseous abyss and it was deemed that his squealing like a girl had brought on the wild eyed junkyard dawg as well as causing some of us to question his now unprovable boyhood.
If Old Orville hadn’t brought an end to what was a thankfully short era in bicycle gang initiation, would we have continued until someone died inside the tank?
Possibly.
Lawd knows this wasn’t the first and certainly not the last stupid and dangerous thing we did as we emulated The Thunderbirds and El Kabong in our childlike endeavor to live life to the very fullest.
Or die trying.
Thank you, friend.
Barry out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns
https://barry-williams.com/blog/hazing-tastes-awful-works-great/
It’s not that bad. Really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine
I’m telling you, this is The Shit!
Doan anyone stand in our whey!
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