When I was knee high to a short toad I was always playing with sharp and pointy sticks. mama was always saying, “And don’t you play with any sharp and pointy sticks, if you do you are going to poke out both of your eyes and you will be blind for the rest of your life!”

Now I want you to know, dumb as I was I never would have thought of that on my own.

From this I have concluded that it is mothers that plant the idea in little boy’s minds to play with sharp and pointy sticks to begin with and thus it was that I carried ‘OL’ EYE POKER,’ my eye poking stick everywhere I went just in the eventuality that I got this terrible urge to poke out an eye.

I must have been five or six when I took one of my frequent jaunts on the Fox River. I turned over rocks to catch crayfish and hellgrammites and I caught a big, old mean water snake and teased it for a while until it slithered into the water and, shouting little snake praises for deliverence, it made its escape.

I skipped stones and threw rocks at a big bald-faced hornets nest until the hornets became so angry they made me run away. Through all of this I carried my eye poking stick,
Then I discovered a most wonderful treasure. The thing captivated me, gripping my attention as nothing had since I had found the slightly deceased, maggot covered chicken out behind the barn.

There, washed high and dry at the river’s edge by the last tide was a huge, de-activated and very dead pig that had surpassed its life expectancy some days before.

I reached out and thumped the sweet swine with ’Ol’ Eye Poker’ and wonder of wonders, a drum! ‘Whump, whump, whump. Dum, dum, dum,’ and the sound resonated out over the Fox River. But, as such things seem to happen I soon grew tired of this lovely musical interlude. (This by the way was the extent of my experience with a musical instrument.)

It was about this time that things took a dramatic change for the worse. What had began as a big, beautiful, dead bloated pig was now transforming itself into a fierce, fire-breathing dragon, and it was about to attack!

Swiftly, realizing the terrible danger I was in, ‘Ol’ Eye Poker’ became a spear. And I, with no thought for my own safety, charged the dragon!

little boys should not be allowed to play with sharp and pointy sticks.

’Ol’ Eye Poker’ struck the dragon a deadly blow and that darned pig exploded in my face.

Now, I imagine I have experienced worse things, I just don’t recall when.

When was the last time you did something real stupid and lived to tell the tale? Share it with us, we won’t tell.
Chaz

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