The other day I was pondering all the stupid stuff I’ve done. Well, maybe not all, but some, I didn’t have all day. The things that could have possibly nudged my life in an entirely different direction if they had turned a bit this way or that. We all have moments like that, moments we made that could’ve just as easily broke us.

As Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Ernie knew a thing or two about getting broken. Tough customer. Perhaps a bit unhinged on occasion, but some occasions call for such.

It seemed that quite a large portion of the stuff that I piled into the “stupid” heap of the past, involved the various motorcycles we had growing up, and the one 3-wheeler. One 3-wheeler is one too many. Anyone that spent any time on a 3-wheeler as a kid has stories, and scars to verify those stories.

The scar usually starts at the back of the calf. The calf above the foot that you were accustomed to putting on the ground when you turned and slid on your motorcycle. The two-wheeled motorcycle that lacked that hungry third-wheel that hovered behind your foot, patiently waiting to chew up the pant leg on your Toughskins jeans and leave you in a whimpering heap in its wake.

Speaking of whimpering, occasionally Dad would get a hankering for soft-serve, and we’d load up and head to Ethels Drive-In (“Winzy’s” to you youngsters). The siren song of soft-serve is strong, strong enough to cloud Dads ability to recollect what taking us anywhere generally resulted in.

On one such trip, I remember my brother Jarvis falling asleep in the seat next to me on the drive over. When we arrived at Ethel’s he awoke, but couldn’t straighten his neck. To a child a kink in the neck can be a bit alarming, and he began to cry.

His sobbing, his head cocked to one side, the terrified look in his eye’s…hilarious. Mom shot me a look in an attempt to stifle the joy I was deriving from the situation, but I’m sure she was just as entertained. As a mother you are required to exercise some degree of decorum in such a situation. So it goes.

Another time, we stopped after a day of swimming in the Bowbells pool, or shivering to such an extent that it resembled swimming. Nothing felt better than lying flat on the hot cement surrounding that pool of ice water. The pool deck was always littered with purple lipped, red-eyed kids, convulsing and quivering uncontrollably, and occasionally jolting to the bite of the ever-present horseflies.

Even if your core temperature was perilously low, a post-swim stop at Ethel’s or Winzy’s was mandatory. I can still remember how it felt sitting in the back of the van, wrapped in your pool towel, being chilled to the core, but feeling the warm summer wind blowing across you through the open window.

There are only a few physical sensations from my childhood that I can still “feel”. That post-swim summer breeze, and my Grandma Rose’s hugs. She radiated pure love that still finds its way around me.

Sometimes, if the chill got to be too much, one might peel off their clammy cold swim trunks and attempt to wrestle into something dry. We all know it’s easier to slip into dry clothes when you are dry.

I was feeling the breeze, and allowing myself to air-dry in the back of our Ford Econoline, while we drove back to Lignite. Dad’s soft-serve glow was waning, Mom was bobbing in and out of consciousness, Jarvis was clutching his forehead, whining about yet another brain-freeze, and as a car approached to pass us, I had an idea.

Maybe not so much an idea, as an idea takes thought. Standing up in the back of the van, I pressed my pasty 8-year old air-drying cheeks against the big glass side window, and gave the passers by a bit of a vanilla shake. As I proudly smudged the glass, I glanced up and saw Dad looking at me in the rear-view mirror. “I don’t want to ever see you do that again” quickly cut a path through the breeze I had been enjoying.

Like the setting sun, my buns sank to the bristly indoor-outdoor carpet, and as I wiggled into my dry clothes, I heard Mom sleepily say, “Do what?”

Get some more sleep Mom, it’s going to be a long ride.