In my childhood there were few restraints. On one particular outing those restraints were pushed to the limit. My friend Dennis and I went to the army surplus store to buy crap, cause that's what 12 year olds do. So we bought a lot of useless trinkets that had probably saved someone's life once, but all and all it was worthless crap. Except for the trip wire. Just the mention of it makes me think about the things that I could do with it right now. Well that night we snuck out of his house at about 3 am. And terrorized the neighborhood. The usual potato in the tailpipe and writing with Kool-aid packets on concrete driveway's so when the dew comes out it is stained for life. (You should try it.) But the Coup de Grace was when we strung our trip wire between two mailbox's on opposite sides of the street. I'm not really sure what we were thinking was going to happen. But as we laid on our bellies in the yard dreaming of a tractor trailer driving by and ripping out the mailbox's. Our dreams were jolted by the sound of a motorcycle coming through the neighborhood. We went to take down the wire but it was no use. FAST back to the yard to watch this unfold. At this point let me tell you 1 thing that I am so thankful for. The fact that we strung that wire as low as we did, by about 4 inches, or this story wouldn't be as funny as it would be deadly. So here comes the motorcycle, he's going about 35 miles an hour and he hits the wire. Thankfully with his handle bars. To our surprise it held. He went from 35 miles an hour to about 1. 1 mile an hour. All we heard was twwwaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggg POP. As the wire gave way he popped a wheelie and came to a stop about 70 feet away. Looked around , revved his engine a couple of times thinking it was engine trouble. Meanwhile I went to find something to clean the crap out of my pants.
true story, except for the crap.
