An Example Of My Poor Judgement
Merriam-Webster’s definition of a booby trap is — a trap for the unwary or unsuspecting; pitfall
I know how this story begins and I know how it ends but, for the life of me, can’t explain the middle.
Why you do what you do when you’re 10 years old often can’t be explained. When your critical thinking becomes a bit more refined, say — in your 80s, you slap your withered hand again your wrinkled brow and exclaim, “WHAT WAS I THINKING?”
My cousin Kit and I were into collecting rocks. The stranger and shinier the rock the better. We weren’t on any academic crusade to learn the types of rocks; sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic and all that. We were just collecting neat looking rocks.
Kit’s older brother Ralph was the only other kid who knew about our collection. It was a secret.
One afternoon after school as Kit and I were going into his mother’s house to get peanut butter sandwiches, we saw: there lying on the pathway to her front door, 2 the the snazziest rocks you’d ever want to see. Must have been filled with quartz but I’m not into that stuff. Shiny as shit. Just the type we liked and needed for our collection.
Kit bent over to pick up one of them, I the other.
As I wrapped my fingers around my rock, I felt a slippery substance on the underside, the part that I couldn’t have seen before I picked up the rock.
Yucky!
What was it? That gooey substance?
All attraction for the rock quickly dissipated when I realized that it was spit. A huge lunger that someone had purposely dredged up from deep; inside the old sinuses and slathered on the rock. Kit suffered the same fate with his rock. We were as repulsed as 10 year olds can get with something gross.
After quickly wiping our hands off on our pants, we looked at each other and agreed in unison “Ralph!”
We immediately started plotting our next production: The Revenge Of The Rocks
This much we knew:
Ralph and his best friend Bobby loved to ride their bikes. Every day it they’d ride. Through rain, cold, snow; they loved to ride with the challenge of snow. Every day!
They recently had even cut primitive paths in the woods across from my house. They rode their bikes on these trails by the hour.
Merriam-Webster’s definition of a booby trap is — a trap for the unwary or unsuspecting: pitfall.
Kit and I came to the decision that we’d booby trap the paths to cause as much mayhem as possible the next time Ralph and Bobby rode on their beloved bike trails.
What was wrong with Kit and me even thinking about such a stupid dangerous activity is now beyond my capability to comprehend.
The how to construct a booby trap on bike paths:
- Dig hole approximate 1’ deep and 2' wide
2 Sharpen stick
3 Plant sharpened stick in hole with pointed side up.
4 Cover hole with leaves, twigs and dirt to render it indistinguishable from the dirt bike path. It has to be weak enough for anyone putting pressure on it to break through.
With any luck, impale a bike tire on the sharpened stick. POP!
Well, ideally, that’s how it should have gone.
Plans started to come off the tracks when Bobby’s mother asked him and Ralph to come grocery shopping with her; help carry the bags. She bribed them by saying she’d treat them to a hot dog, Tasty Cakes and Coke at the luncheonette by the Acme Super Market in the shopping center.
Another unexpected development was that Kit’s dad, Mike, had discover the paths eliminated about 15 minutes of his walk home from the station after his every weekday New York commute and some; “Sipping and tippen” * at the beer joint by the station.
Mike hit the bike paths at around sunset that day. On a cold winter afternoon with the sunlight fading, he could hardly make out where the trails merged into the woods.
Kit’s dad was hauled out of the woods by the Oakhurst EMTs. Mercifically, the sharpened stick missed his foot.
He only broke a little bone in his ankle.
Kit and I denied everything but they made us fill up the holes in the paths anyway.
Ralph and Bobby never admitted to spitting on the rocks either.
- Drinks After Work: Toby Keith
