Bill

When I was a kid I did a lot of stupid, crazy, and shitty things.  I'm not talking about when I was a teen but rather when I was pretty small; between the ages of 6-10.  A lot of the times I was fully aware of what I was doing and didn't really care about the consequences. Other times I thought I understood what I was doing but I really didn't comprehend the full burden I was putting on my parents.

This story describes an event that falls in the later category.

When I was about seven or eight my best friend (I'm hiding his name intentionally) and I were home alone and we were looking for something fun to do.  We went into my garage and, within, we found some cans of black, blue, and red spray paint.  It didn't take us long to decide these cans would provide us with hours of fun.  We started off spraying a few spots here and there in the garage; on my dad's workbench or on the inner wall.  Shortly afterwards we expanded our canvas to include the exterior wall of the garage.  We had, prior to that day, a white garage with black trim.  Once my friend and I were done we had a far more colorful garage thanks to the many dark splotches of spray paint we left everywhere we could reach.

Neither of us really understood one critical component about spray paint - you don't want to have the nozzle too close to the surface.  We held the cans close and push the buttons hard which resulted in thick pools of paint forming on the wall each pool trailing a tail to the ground as the pain and gravity intermingled.

After briefly admiring our handiwork on the garage we moseyed into the driveway where my dad had two blue pickup trucks.  At least one had a camper top on it.  In short order they had matching paint schemes with the garage.  Just as quickly we turned around and gave the same treatment to the side of my house.  It was as if we had moved into a world where everything would pass for a skittles wrapper.  There were blue, red, and black dots everywhere we could reach.

Amazingly we still had paint left and my friend lived right next door.  His house was a red brick that was just begging for a little sprucing up.  We ran over to his house and repeated the process.  Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot.. Everywhere we could.  We probably laughed about it until we ran out of paint.

Then we tossed out the paint cans and went about our merry way thinking nothing of the destruction we had left behind.

I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall the night after the painting; listening to my parents discuss what they were going to do with me.  Hopefully the absurdity of it brought them a few laughs.

Every once in  while this story pops into conversation with one of my parents and we chuckle looking back on it.  I know it caused them both a lot of inconvenience - they did have to repaint the entire house and garage.  I'm not sure what my dad did about the trucks.

Today I found a story about another kid causing his parents a lot of pain and it reminded me of the painting day. In this story a four year old used his fathers passport as a coloring book which has left the boy and his father stuck in South Korea.  I think my polka dots were better art - but I did have about four years of extra practice.

#childhood #spray-paint #paint #graffiti #biography

When I was a kid, maybe 7, we had dirt bikes for everyone in the family.  I had a little Kawasaki 75 I think. My older brother had a Yamaha 125, my mom had a Yamaha 250, I think, and my dad had this big beastly 500.  We used to go out and ride fairly frequently in the summer - we'd camp out I think but I don't really remember.

My bike looked something like this I think.

I have fond memories of riding the bike but they are mostly just fuzzy memories of zooming along, in my big helmet and my equally large elbow and knee pads, across the desert.  Some of the stuff we rode on was really fine sand and other bits were full of scrub brush and were hard packed dirt.  It was an awesome thing for our family to do.

I don't remember if any of our family friends ever went with us though I wouldn't be surprised if my dad's buddy and his family came along some times.  Mostly I just remember the four of us out there having a blast.

We weren't the only ones out there of course.  There were plenty of other bikers and there were a lot of dune buggies of all shapes and sizes.  I mostly remember the buggies and some of the adult guy bikers who were out there hanging out in a huge bowl.   The bowl had an easy way to get in and out of it but it also had a really hard way to get out of it.   At least one end of the bowl was really sheer - like, to my kid eyes, it looked totally vertical and it was really tall - I would have guessed it was over 100 feet tall.  It was massive and intimidating and yet people would try to ride up that wall and get out of the bowl.

In my memory not many people escaped by going that route.  I did see some motorcycles get up there but I don't remember ever seeing a dune buggy reach the crest.  Instead they would get anywhere between half way and ninety percent up the wall before flipping backwards and cascading down the wall.  It was crazy to watch.  I can't imagine the thrill that the bike riders had when they launched over the wall's edge - or the terror the guys in the buggies had when they started to flip backwards knowing that they had lost all chance of success.

I don't remember if the big bowl had a name - though I imagine anyone that spends time in Little Sahara today knows the bowl I'm talking about.  There are probably still people trying to test themselves against gravity (and failing).

When I look back on my childhood I realize I was pretty damn lucky to get to do some of the awesome stuff we did.  My brother and I learned to ski in the mountains of Utah, we dirt biked in some of the best dunes in the country, we camped and fished on some amazing lakes, and we were able to travel to a bunch of amazing places.  Sometimes I think my kids are really missing out.

#motorcycles #utah #fun #biography