This boy could continue to list stuff for days� literally. DatSauceGuy is so very glad that his boy appears more-sane than he was as a child.

But, then? If you were to ask DaMom-DaSauce? She�d say that yer diarist of record was an easy going, never in trouble, low-problem child, and polite� [And all that is correct as far as it goes.] So go figure. What parents never know about their children is probably for the best. Some of this has been told to her, and she just looks confused, as if she and YerSafeTextBuddy here didn�t share the same reality.

Now, if you were to ask DaDad-DaSauce? He�d respond with� Everything that boy did was half-assed. I could never get him to complete a job properly. [The man worked my child-ass to the bone, and if the task was to clean the garage? After six or eight hours of serious labor, he�d nitpick the results by going� Hey! Look here in the corner. There�s some dust you missed, and if you call that stacking wood� Damn! It is done like this. If it was mowing the two acre lawn up hills and around stuff, and then mowing it again to mulch in the chopped grass, and trimming around all the rocks and dozens of trees with scissors� He�d still find problem areas. You get the idea. Never EVER GOOD ENOUGH.] To give the man his due? He really was enormously better than his dad. His father was a complete bastard. If he came home from school with straight A�s�there would be questions about why he wasn�t taking more classes. If he made more money than normal and bought himself a new winter coat, his father would raise his RENT at age nine.

To give him more credit? He periodically hugged this boy. And kissed him on the lips now and again (which was clearly hard for him, as his pop showed ZERO affection.) He thinks DatDaSauce is swell today because we live on different coasts and he views me as successful. Funny.

Digression ends.

++++++++++++

Back to STUPID?

On the topic of blowing shit up? The Anarchist Cookbook was a favorite read. And testing the various methods of making explosions was a major joy as a child. You have to understand that YerDiarist lived in a Vermont township comprised of five villages, totaling 1200 folks (most of them the Brooks family. Grin.) The town was also the county seat. Thus the Common in my hometown included a lovely large courthouse, a small jail, a big congregational church, a town-hall (labeled grange-hall) for town meetings (the only real democratic form of government, by the way, it�s a combination of laissez faire and Arguments R Us) fountains and on.

Folks would do the strangest shit with explosives. Half the town leaders had their own homemade cannons that they tried to out blast each other with during major events� This could be New Year�s Eve at Midnight or the turn of the day into the 4th of July� whatever. Beyond the penchant for home-made cannons (that often exploded themselves with shrapnel flying�) They would literally RING THE PHUCKING CHURCHBELL with shotguns. DaSauce shits you not. They�d put phrigging slugs in their 10 or 12 gauge and ring the bell for events as well. Go figure.

So while you might wonder where the penchant for BOOM came from, see the above.

There was the typical playing with M-80�s, M-120�s Half-Sized-Sticks of Dynamite� Yeah. Fireworks were a fave. We�d have to sneak them over the Canadian border to bring them in, but that wasn�t so hard. Christ, at one point in my childhood I had a living room that was in Canada.

So, with the fireworks, we kids had a blast. We�d put lady fingers in our pump-Crossman BB guns and shoot them at each other� We would have duels with regular, and explosive balled roman candles�The regular ones were ten paces, and turn and light. The explosive ones were 16 paces. We did get in the habit of wearing ski-goggles and gloves after a few minor burns though. There were plenty of major sea battles in row boats and canoes on the local ponds and small lakes with both Roman Candles and Bottle Rockets� These sometimes escalated to bigger fireworks, but mostly were pretty much fun and mostly semi-safe.

But REALLY blowing shit up?

First we started with seeing how gasoline vapor in a gallon maple can (a couple of tablespoons� tight metal lid, shaken hard� and M-80�s taped to them) worked out. That was fun. That grew to larger metal containers with various solvents that were bigger bangs� and using a 12 gauge slug to set them off at a distance. But, the pi�ce de r�sistance? Man. We figured out that we could ask local farmers if they had old sheds that needed to come down, a silo, whatever? And we started testing grain-elevator style explosions with a bag of flour and an explosive igniter. This was explosion heaven. DatSauceGuy still has a small scar on the top of his forearm from a five inch, um, splinter that was sticking out of his arm on one of the Shed TakeDowns. Amazing.

Gotta shorten these, as ThisDumbassSauceGuy is not doing another day of this�

OK. Train tracks. At age seven or eight a couple of friends and I found a largely whole and hale unit from a prior age. We called it a push-me-pull-you. I haven�t a clue what those rail carts were called� but they had a pair of handles and one of you moved up while the other pulled down (NOT SEXUAL THANKS�)

We got it working and lubed and reboarded where there were missing planks and got it onto the tracks. We had fun mushing up and down these tracks a couple of days in a row. Having never heard a train during the daytime on that track, it was just a matter of levering the damned heavy thing to the side and off the tracks far enough to be able to know that it was safe for the night. Then one day�the third time we used it? There was some vibration� pretty good vibration suddenly. And being a boy with some instinct for survival DatSauceChild yelled, �Train!� all the while hoping he wasn�t crying wolf and pissing off his buds�

We slowed, got off, levered it mostly off the tracks as the train came around a corner ahead�. We got back when we knew that we weren�t going to manage in time� Scrambling over the embankment. The cart thing was struck a glancing blow by a fairly slow moving train. And totally wrecked.

But we had fun with it for a bit�

Even shorter� Tunneling in Snow Banks and High Drifts� in the winter was a favorite pastime. You�d build long tunnels and they�d freeze solid during the night when the conditions were right� and domed areas where we could camp (and the breath from our faces would make the rooms glisten and body heat actually warmed it pretty well if you closed off the end where the tunnel came in and had some insulator from the snow beneath.) But, one day we were in mid-tunnel when a snow-plow came past and threw ungodly amounts of snow on top of us�and knocked the tunnel down on our heads�

It was something of a struggle to get loose� and we were all digging and spitting and gasping�Dumbasses.

Trying to roll a car? My first car (an ancient 1973 LTD Country Squire Ford Boat Station Wagon) was acting up in my 16th year. Driving had started (legally) at 13, as work vehicles (trucks and the like) were legal for kids of that age to drive during daylight. But, the car was a piece of shit and on its last legs so a pal and I took turns trying our asses off in a field (medium mushy damp soil) to get the damned thing to roll. You�d get up to speed and cut the wheel while braking and then as it started to spin, cut the wheel again and accelerate. All we managed to do was blow the tires on one side of the car. So after getting them repaired we drained the oil and went for a ride�It was only a couple of miles and change before we blew a rod and seized the engine. It was sold as scrap for the cost of pickup�as by then the rust from the salt on the winter roads had even eaten through the floorboards anyway.

Pole-Sitting? Big quarries in Vermont. Marble, Granite, Former Asbestos, and on? There were many within reach. One of them had these massive (100 plus foot) wooden poles that had rungs on them, and old guy-wires and a big metal plate that would rotate at the top. It was a guess that they moved rock with them via leverage and steam or work-horses� But, one of us had the hair-brained idea to head up them at one point. It was pretty cool. We learned which rungs were rusted through or had rotted out of the poles� and the only really hairy part was getting to the top plate and sitting yer butt up there or getting off of it--and it was worse when windy. So this became a pastime. As we got older it became one done at night with a small pack of food and smokes and beers and lobbing the bottles at each other. By upper-middle teens we had broken too many rungs to continue. YerSauceOfDamnedLucky is pleased not to have fallen and killed himself on that shit. But it was a competitive and manly thing for sure. Probably led to being in the games biz.

Shorter:

Same quarries? Dumb boys chucking various types of glass from the tops of them�and seeing them smash and splinter and become literal fragments of glass. The next year after having taken an outward-bound course we decided to rappel down it. All of us bounced off the sides more than once and embedded the damned glass we had thrown the previous year in various areas.

Nearly dying in hay? Even shorter. Never build a huge fort out of moldy and moist bales of hay�as the gasses in there on a hot day will kick your ass and make you pass out and have your friends and you dragging your asses out. And always have a witness to your stupidity.

The dumb story about adolescent sexual stuff? 12 years old or so? Really and deeply interested in the nether regions of dames. So some pals and YerSauce noticed that we could go swimming and hang out on the bottom of the pool or swimming hole with swim masks on, and with a foot or an arm lodged somewhere you could lie on the bottom until Denise (or whoever, but for some reason this boy remembers her dark pubes. Grin.) dove in and her bikini bottom slid down and her top came partway off� This was a blast until a moment where YerIDIOT diarist got his arm stuck between some rocks after having held his breath too long. The struggle to get loose and come up cured that little bit of enjoying the pull of water on wet females.

Dumb. Really dumb. Do not try any of this at home. And this idiot has purposely left out solvent names, and the real methodology for accomplishing some of this shit. You�ll have to find it elsewhere if you are a complete buffoon.

--SauceOfSheerStupidityAsABoy

PS. DaSauce has permission to offer love and OUT GOLFWIDOW (closet lesbian? Doubt it. Not according to the wangitude rumors. Great human? Yup) for being the goof that submitted My Dumb Ass� in the entry that won the Diarist.Net Thingie. Thank you, Ma�am. You Rock As Usual. And the Anthony thing? I cook better. Pfft.

PPS. Tonight�s weird link needs an intro� Why the phuck are record companies as dumb as rocks? Geez. Like any of us want to listen to shit recorded at crappy bit-rates with lousy/lossy compression. MP3�s sound bad enough below 128K� CD Quality is a term we won�t hear much longer as audio quality continues to improve� CD�s even suck for audiophiles.

It�s like watching a phucking movie in goddamned �FullScreenMYASS� pan and scan when you own a nice proscan dvd player and a highdef-widescreen-idiot-box. Assholes.

Oooh. Gotta find a link. Props to Booberella On This Topic (see the second graph from the bottom!) YerSauce just bought the movie The Bank Shot after having seen it for the second time in his life on HD-Net and it was hilarious and beautiful. But, did DaAssholeDiarist check to see if it was a freaking cropped version? Hell no. It was out in HD! But nope, they only released the shitty FullScreen and he can�t find his receipt for cash paid. Phuckers.