2 hours ago, charliearon said:

PicoloPete

One Saturday before July 4th, my parents left to go somewhere for awhile. I was looking for something to do when my eyes locked on to my box of safe and sane fireworks. Hmmm, there must be something in there that I could do.  I know, I’ll light the Piccolo Pete indoors. That way, the noise will sound muffled outside, but tremendously loud inside. Yeah, that sounds like fun. So I went into the garage & lit it. Boy, it was loud!! But right away I thought “Oh, no, WHAT was I thinking?” I forgot about the smoke that those things generate! Outdoors, the wind dissipates it right away. But not indoors. Piccolo Petes don’t have Off switches.  I was panicking, & I could do nothing about it. It was foggy with smoke in the garage before the Piccolo Pete stopped. What to do, what to do? I opened the garage door & the door from the garage to the backyard. Not enough, got to do more. Raced to the front door & flung it open. What else? Open every single window in the house. Grab the air freshener, run around & start spraying. The situation now called for a special incantation to make it all disappear & to calm me down: “DON’TCOMEHOMEYETDON’T COMEHOMEYETDON’TCOMEHOMEYETDON’TCOMEHOMEYET“. That’s what made it torturous: I had no idea when my parents would be back. They arrived 90 minutes later. My mom said “How’s everything here?” “Oh, everything is just fine…..”😙

@Mike A  Sniff, Sniff......What's that smell??  You been smokin', boy??

Another one I don't think I ever posted.

Hot Water

"OK, kids," Mom called into the bedroom, "time for your baths."

"But we're doing something now," I replied.

"Do what your mother told you and get into that bathtub," yelled Dad.

That was it!  We seldom argued with Dad.  "Can I light the water heater?" I asked.

"All right," said Mom, "but be careful."

When we first moved into the house on Larkin Street, it didn't have an automatic hot water heater. Whenever we needed hot water, we had to turn on the gas valve and light the burner.  It took about thirty minutes to heat the water.

Lee and I knew how to light the water heater, we'd done it a hundred times.  There was nothing to it really. In fact, it was kind of fun.  Some of our friends weren't allowed to light their water heaters yet.

The water heater was in the bathroom, between the end of the bathtub and the wall.  I got a match from the top of the kitchen stove.  Leon was already waiting for me in the bathroom.

We lay on the floor to get a good view of what we were doing.  I opened the little door that exposed the burner, turned the gas valve a little way, struck the match, and held it over the burner.

But the match went out.  "Just a second Lee", I said, "I'll go get another one."  I got two, in case the next one also went out.

Lee was still lying on the floor.  I got down beside him.  The burner door was still open.  I struck the match and started to stick it thought the door opening to the burner.

WHOOMP!  It wasn't exactly an explosion.  It felt like a hot wind.  But I smelled burnt hair.
I looked at Leon.  His eyebrows and eyelashes were gone and his forehead looked like he had been sunburnt.  Most of the hair on the front of his head was gone, or had turned to very short curls of brown stubble.  I imagined I looked much the same.

But he wasn't crying, I hadn't felt anything but the hot wind for a second.  It didn't hurt.

Dad came rushing to the bathroom, followed closely Mom.  We looked at him from the floor.  As soon as he saw no real damage had been done, he started to laugh.

It wasn't the same with Mom though,  she took one look at Lee and I and started to faint.  Dad, still chuckling, caught her and carried her to the living room couch.  This was nothing new. Mom would faint whenever she thought something serious had happened to any of us, or sometimes, even, when she got very angry.

Dad told me to turn the gas off as he caught Mom.  Lee and I arose from our prone positions and followed him out to the living room.  "You're still going to take a bath tonight," he said.

He went through the procedure he always went through whenever Mom fainted.  Prop her feet up on a pillow and put a cold rag on her forehead.  She came out of it rather quickly.  "Oh boys," she said, "what happened?"  Dad told her everything was all right.  She lay on the couch and look at us again.  "Oh my God!  How did that happen?" she asked.  

Dad was already on his way back to the bathroom to light the water heater again.  I told Mom we had a little accident.

While we were waiting for the bath water to get hot, Dad scrubbed the burnt hair from the front of our heads with a wet rag.  Then he spread some butter on our foreheads.  He chuckled as did it.  He suggested to Mom that we get short haircuts, buzz cuts, the next day.  It would be a couple of days before we washed our faces again.

We didn't want to go to school the next day, looking the way we did.  So after Dad left for work, Mom took us to the barber shop for haircuts.  He knew exactly what happened, he'd seen it before.

We went back to school right after lunch, each with a note in our hands explaining to the Sisters what had happened.  Sister Mary Catherine looked at me and rolled her eyes.  "Boys!" she said.

It would be several years before I understood why women would be upset, and why men would laugh, at these types of situations.  It would also be several months before Lee and I would be allowed to light the hot water heater again.

Noel
PS:  Boys must have tough guardian angels to see us through our pre-teens and teens or most of us wouldn't live to adulthood.  Some of us even bear the scars.  For me it's a broken nose the result of doing tricks on my bike when I was about 10 or 11.

 

Edited December 6, 20214 yr by birdguy

3 hours ago, LHookins said:

Am I the only one who wants to try this now? 😄

Hook

Nope...

On 12/3/2021 at 5:58 PM, charliearon said:

What?? You don't like "Walkin' around in Women's unerdwear"?

 

I was going to give that a 'like'. But I wasn't sure what message it would send. 😵

1 hour ago, charliearon said:

Sniff, Sniff......What's that smell??  You been smokin', boy??

Ah, that’s another story. One of the neighbors my parents’ age had a Weimaraner dog. They can be really high strung. His name was Stormy. I had a babysitting gig with Stormy, because he would destroy things if he was left alone. They showed me a telephone he totally destroyed by chewing it when it rang. So if they went out at night on weekends, I’d babysit Stormy.

The woman smoked like a chimney. The entire house reeked of it. There were ashtrays, lighters & stacks of cigarettes all over the place. So there I was, 10 years old, what an opportunity to see what it was like to smoke. They had a sliding glass door to their yard, there were bushes high enough so their neighbors couldn’t see, so I smoked away.  I did it for a few more times on other days I watched Stormy, but eventually thought “You know, this is kind of stupid” and never smoked again.

Edited December 6, 20214 yr by Mike A
clarity