The last of my 3 Childhood Memories

My brother, Stephen, and I loved to play with fire when we were kids. We were all the time burning things, throwing things into fires, etc. I remember several times that we hid and made small fires. We would also take pieces of paper, light the end on fire, and act like we were smoking. Like President Clinton, though, I never inhaled. 

In addition to fire, we also loved fireworks. It was illegal to shoot fireworks in Georgia, but lucky for us, we lived in Alabama! Some friends of ours had a house out in the country, and we would actually all get together there for firework wars. It was kind of like hide and go seek, but we would shoot each other with Bottle Rockets or Roman Candles (on occasion, something bigger too!).

One day, following one of the “firework holidays”, Stephen and I decided that we would go into the yard and shoot some of the leftover bottle rockets that we had. We grabbed some coke bottles, the fireworks, and some matches and headed outside. We had learned that shooting the Bottle Rocket out of a bottle made it go much farther and burned your skin much less. After a few minutes of shooting them, a cop pulled up. He told us that, although it was legal to shoot fireworks in the state, it was actually not in the city limits, and they had received complaints about us. 

Stephen and I knew exactly who had complained. It was our neighbors, The Hamms (their last name was really Hammonds, but that’s what we always called them). They were an older couple that lived across the street from us. They were nice people, but could get pretty grouchy – like old people do. 

We went inside, and the cop left. No big deal.

Later on, Stephen decided that he was going to sneak out back and shoot off one more. He came into the living room where Mir, her boyfriend, and I were all watching TV. He told us his plan and went outside – slowly closing the sliding glass door behind him so it wouldn’t make too much noise.

He went outside and got set up while we watched. As soon as he lit it, it flew out of control…right over to the Hamms’ house and blew up over their roof!! Stephen saw what was happening and made a bee line (is that how you spell that?! I don’t think I’ve ever actually written that phrase out before) back to the house…running SMACK INTO THE GLASS DOOR!!!! He hit is so hard that he about knocked himself out! We were all DYING laughing – like near peeing your pants, can’t catch your breath, clapping like a retarded seal laughing!! Stephen slung the door open and sat down with us like nothing had happened so that he wouldn’t get in trouble! 

I really wish that you could have seen the precision with which he closed the door so that my mom would not hear it shut. The fact that he did that and then 10 seconds later ran right into it was CLASSIC!