Tim’s yelling and screaming and clutching his face.
And I’m like “Oh, crap… I’ve taken out his eye.”
We gathered around anxiously. While Paul races off to look for a first aid kit.
Man…
If our parents find out about this… we’ll never get to play skyrocket wars again!
Yeah… if they knew what we were doing … there would’ve been some serious grounding going on.
So we’re back in the heady days of the early 90s…
Back when my mates and I would think up creative ways to inflict pain upon each other.
We called it “fun”.
First there were the monkey-apple wars.
Monkey apples are little white berries. We loaded them into what we knew as “joey guns”. Basically a plastic or cardboard tube with a cut off rubber glove finger taped to one end.
Load the monkey apple. Pull the rubber finger back as far as possible without breaking. Take aim. Then fire at your opponent.
I forgot the “mentally cross your fingers step”… because they weren’t particularly accurate over longer distances.
We used to run around bush areas and have a great old time firing berries at each other. We knew enough to wear safety goggles at least.
But this time…
It was the days leading up to Guy Fawkes Day. And once upon a time 14 year olds could buy whatever fireworks they liked.
Not like nowadays… where there’s just a few fizzy and loud banging things.
Back then we could buy… skyrockets.
The big ones cost a lot. And we — believe it or not — knew better than to let one of those off anywhere other than straight up.
So we bought the packs of 10 mini rockets. Ones that whizzed off fast. And went off with enough of a bang to still be worth it!
But not enough to endanger life and property — or so we thought.
Hey… we had serious engineering on our minds as 14 year olds: how to build the most accurate tubes for launching the skyrockets at each other.
Again… we had safety gear. Not all brimming with complete stupidity
But, y’know… safety gear ain’t much good when you’re all standing around without it on yet…
And Chris decides to do a test launch without telling anyone.
I aimed the other way… but a misfire meant the rocket looped around and flew strait into Tim’s face.
And there I was… thinking I’d blinded my friend.
Also kinda gutted that this might put paid to racing around the park trying to hit each other with rockets!
Yeah… those were… er… the days?
It’s now that time of the year again… with Guy Fawkes Day tomorrow.
And sometimes at this time of year I tell my kids this story.
Not really to give them a moral lesson. But because it shows…
I was a kid once too… and did some dumb stuff
And no quips thank you, {{Contact.FirstName}} … about how I’m now an adult and STILL do dumb stuff!
Although, I guess that’s a given 😉
Tim was OK… and once he realized he could see fine… he led the charge into battle!
Which didn’t really last that long because we couldn’t afford to buy that many skyrockets!
I guess we should’ve stuck to shooting monkey apples at each other. They were in plentiful supply.
There’s nothing like a gorgeous big whelt on your chest to know you’ve had a fun day out with your mates.
Ahh… just like freelancing…
All right… I jest.
But our freelancing can occasionally misfire. And threaten to take out an eye… or worse.
But mistakes are our teachers, mentors, allies. We pick ourselves up. And we get out there and enjoy the skyrocket war— … I mean… we enjoy serving and delighting our clients.
Stay safe. And don’t let me catch you with a sawn-off pipe and a packet of skyrockets!
Enjoy the fireworks 🎆
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Chris Milham