Though we’re a family of bullshitters and fish tales, we also had tons of real stories to share with people that no one ever believed…until they saw it. And then they either loved us or hated us.
My father liked to shoot a Coke can (never Pepsi) out of my uncle’s hand just to prove he was a good shot, and my uncle always went along. He still has both hands. They got dynamite one time—fish really do float to the top if they were near (but not actually inside) the blast, or at least they did that week.
Don’t worry—the fish got eaten and there wasn’t that many since this was a pond and not a lake. ;)
We got a really dirt cheap four-wheeler (yes, I realize not everyone calls them this), and the plastic upper frame was held to the actual mechanical part (how’s that awesome terminology for you?) with bungie cords. No joke.
I crashed it into the deep end of the pond, had to use a backhoe and logging chain to get it out, and pretend I had no idea why it was tore up when my dad got home.
Half of my dad’s backyard is full of buried broken things, since we couldn’t hide broken shit in the trash. He always carried the trash to work because he was too cheap for trash service—this is still a funny point of conversation with my family. Anyway, if you broke something, you buried it, because we had so many knickknacks that no one noticed something missing. Fortunately.
Unless it was a really expensive dolphin figurine…that always sucked. Prepare to do the grossest shit imaginable—clean porta potties type of gross—in order to pay back the money for a damn expensive glass dolphin. Punishments could be creative when my dad was in a funny-guy mood.
I’m getting off track.
That’s just one tip of the iceberg there. I’ll share a little more with you as the series goes on, if you want. I’ll also be using a lot of that in these books.
Bottom line, what you may find crazy might have been something I pulled from my actual life. Or an exaggerated version of it. Hopefully that makes it a little more fun to read when you’re guessing if it really happened or not. And the books, of course, will only get crazier.
(I like to ease people into the madness so they don’t see just how deep they’ve gotten until it’s too late and they realize they’re a little crazy too.)
I have some of the absolute best memories from my semi-reckless childhood because of all the crazy ways we found to not be bored—days before internet was a household commonality; before the smart phone gave you unlimited entertainment at your fingertips (which means you had to be creative or stay hella bored); and before social media could forever document the photos of stupid things you’d probably like no one else to ever know about.
(Thank fuck social media happened AFTER I had a child and not before…)
As always, I appreciate each and everyone’s support. You have no idea how much it means to me to bring these stories to life and have an incredible set of readers who support me.
Time to stop writing to you before I get teary-eyed for the first time in the book.
Btw, I love the hell out of you.