My first post.

Hi.

I nearly forgot that I had this account. I think it was when I discovered the 15 minute lunch a few weeks ago that I realized I had my own (empty) blog somewhere nearby just wasting server space. Sure enough, I found the faded yellow post-it note with my log in info on it buried underneath my tray of highlighters and extra chapstick tubes in my desk drawer...and here I am.

I've been intending to start writing for a while, (probably since around the time that I signed up), but I think it's been a combo of feelings of inadequacy as a writer (blog-envy?), laziness, and spending too much time reading everyone else's random thoughts in cyberspace that's kept me from exposing myself verbally. Honestly, I don't think I can ever make anybody in this world uncontrollably laugh out loud (like I did) in their near-silent officespace the way JV's (see 15 minute lunch) memories of he and his brothers nearly killing people when they were kids. But if I can just go someplace to think out loud, and maybe even make someone smile/laugh/think/waste time while doing so, then this (free) service will pay for itself in no time. I guess I can start by explaining grasshopper-phobia. It's pretty self explanatory. The fear of grasshoppers. I'm sure there's an official name for it in a psych textbook somewhere, like Orthopterophobia or something, but to my friends, that's what I call it. I hate grasshoppers. Hate. Yes, strong word: Hate. I hate the Calgary Flames and Brett Favre, but that's not real Hate. That's not "I'm going to throw a brick through the windshield if I see Jarome Iginla driving by" Hate or "I wish Favre would just choke on some chunky Mississippi gumbo and die" Hate, because that's just plain not right to hold that much anger towards anyone. I hate broccoli, but it's not the "I wish every broccoli farm to suffer a drought next year so that I don't ever have to see another head of broccoli" Hate. That's just a friendly "hate" in that I just don't want to say anything positive about it/them and I'd rather say "I hate ___" rather than waste the breath to add another word to the sentence and say "I strongly dislike ___". I really have no reason to strongly dislike any of those things either. Broccoli is a very healthy food, the Calgary Flames are currenly ranked first in the division, and Brett Favre is probably THE greatest QB to ever grace the NFL, both on and off the field. I don't like the texture of broccoli in my mouth; it gives me the gag reflex instantly, the Wild can't win in Calgary, and Favre isn't the franchise QB in Minnesota. That's all. But I Hate grasshoppers. Especially the big ones that you see on the sidewalk or trail, just sitting there. You walk within about 12 inches from them and they jump…but they never jump in the exact direction (the way their head is pointed) you expect them too, which instantly makes you flinch. Usually, they aim away from you, but then they start flapping their wings trying to fly. I say trying, because they can't really fly like other winged insects can. They more or less just bat their wings maniacally hoping that they can propel themselves in some general direction away from the “danger” than provoked them to jump in the first place. This psychedelic display of phototaxis results in this 1.5 to 3 inch creepy crawly insect flailing in an unpredictable spiral, whose destination may or may not be your cheekbone. If it happens to land on you, its six dagger-like feet have the ability to latch onto you like you were made entirely of the fuzzy side of velcro. It takes at least three awkward panicky swats to bat it off of your body, then it clumsily falls to the ground, rolls over, and looks at you with its big opaque eyes…and laughs. Bleckkk…

So, that sets up the story. Around 6th grade, I made a new friend on the school bus on the way to school. It was fall, and school had just started a few weeks ago. I’m not really sure what started the conversation, but by the time we were at school, Ben had told me that he had a go-kart, three snowmobiles, a dirt bike, and they were getting a four-wheeler next week.

Hello new best friend. Obviously, I wasn’t friends with him just for his toys, but they were the basis of most of our memories over the next 4 years.

That day after school, Brady (my other friend in the neighborhood) and I ride our bikes up to our new friends house. I’m not sure why we weren’t friends with him before, because he lived only two blocks away from us, but whatever. We get there, and Ben is filling up the gas tank of the go kart. This thing is one of the coolest machines I’ve ever seen. There’s a single seat, only about 2 inches off the ground with sheet metal for a floor, a small engine mounted on the back (a brand new lawn mower engine, I find out later), a steering wheel, a brake and an accelerator pedal, and that’s about it. He just got new tires on it. Slicks. Not sure how effective slicks will be, as he lives on a gravel road, and the only pavement is his 100 foot driveway, but they look really sweet. He said he’s going to paint it soon. I see no need. This was awesome.

It’s a typical hot, dry autumn afternoon. The sky is a little hazy with crop dust, and the sun is low in the sky, but still quite powerful. We had been taking turns (5 minutes a piece, precisely timed with our digital watches) doing laps around his lawn. We had a cool, winding track. Around the oak tree on the corner of the lot, back to the drive way where you take a sharp right and head straight for the barn, then a sharp left on the pavement (which felt sweet with the slicks) back onto the lawn where you zig between 4 newly planted trees, then loop around the flower garden then back to the oak tree. We were ripping up the lawn something fierce, and his mom noticed after about 2 hours. She didn’t really care, but asked us to not swing the back tires around so much to tear the grass. Our track was getting boring anyway, so we went to the garage and re-filled the tank and discussed our next feature.

Ben decided to show us the art of gravel drag racing. He ran up to his room and got a stop watch, and we decided to time each other from point A to B on the gravel road in front of his house. 2 runs a piece later, we figure out that we’re all using same kart, and therefore there’s really no difference in times. Ben thinks he can do something to go a little faster. He tinkers with something on the carburetor (how a 6th grader knows what to do to a carburetor was beyond me then, but he soon taught us the basics of spraying ether directly into it if the kart didn’t start. Yeah, genius) and sure enough, he shaves a whole second off the time. But, in doing so, he found that instead of locking up the brakes on the gravel to come to a fantastic spinning-cloud-of-dust finish, that is was a lot more fun to take a sharp turn at the end of the track, over the field approach and into knee-high hay field. With the low clearance, the kart came to a quick stop, but not before flattening about 10 feet of grass in its path. Thus was borne the new competition: who can get the farthest into the field until the kart stops.

Ben had his chance, so I was next. I sit down into the pilot’s seat and putter over to the starting line drawn in the gravel. Without hesitation, I gun it. I hit the gas a little too hard, spun the tires, but got moving anyway and soon was gripping and gaining speed. I whiz by the driveway where Ben and Brady are watching, hoping I don’t get very far into the grass. I crank the wheel at the last minute and head into the grass, just to the left of Ben’s crop circle. It’s a pretty hard jolt at first, but my momentum carried me just a couple inches farther than Ben had gotten. As I was sliding over the grass though, I noticed that the front of the kart, which was open with only the sheet metal floor on the bottom, was performing three tasks at once: flattening, cutting, and scraping. As it scraped the thousands of stems of near ready-to-cut hay, every single thing attached to the stem was being thrown into the go kart and onto my lap. Because it was warm, I had shorts on as well, and because the seat is on the floor of the kart, your knees are bent up, with your feet on the pedals only about 2 and a half feet from your butt, the leg opening of my shorts was facing up like a snow cone. I swear that every single insect, (and a half bale of hay) in that swath of grass ended up in my shorts. I leap out of the kart, swatting my ass like it’s on fire. Ben and Brady think I actually am on fire (after all, we’re riding a kart with an engine that’s been cranking for 3 hours into a field of very dry hay). They come running, but when they hear me screaming like a girl and see crushed grasshopper parts and chunks of grass falling out of the bottoms of my shorts, they realize what happened. I’m shaking my legs, kicking, swatting, jiggling my shorts. I swear bugs were just pouring out of my pants like when they pour the cockroaches out of the bucket on those reality shows. It had to have been two or three hundred of them (obviously it was only about 10 of them, but that’s how I remember it). I end up having to unbutton and unzip and reach in to flick out the last two demons. The first one was quite submissive and fell right out the bottom. The second one, though, attached quite happily to the right seam of my boxers, decided to take a leap of faith as my flicking finger approached it. He didn’t get very far, as he stayed inside my pants, but he still attempted to fly. Imagine that flurry of wings and legs, buzzing in your shorts near your genitals as you have both hands in your unbuttoned pants while you spin and jump and yell on the side of a public road with your two friends watching and laughing at you as they pay more attention to pulling the go-kart out of the field. Yeah, scarred for life. It eventually gave up and realized that gravity was actually its ally. It fell safely to the ground between my feet. Safely, that is, until I instinctively injected its brain matter into the soil. He had the last laugh though. He had successfully raised my heart rate to marathon-running levels, had caused more adrenaline to run through my veins than if I had been chased by a rabid grizzly bear, and had kept me from entering the grass field for a few years, even with long pants.

I called it a day with that final act. Brady hopped on and took his chances as I was getting on my bike to go home. He made it a little farther into the grass, but evaded the grasshopper colony that I had apparently cleaned out moments earlier.

The next day on the bus, we were laughing about it all, and couldn’t wait to get on the track again. We never conducted this competition again. I'm not sure if we were all now afraid of the hopping devils with near useless wings, or if we decided the spinning dust storm drag finish was more exciting, but to this day, I still can't walk comfortably through a grass field. Ben told us that his dad was ordering a new chain and a new clutch for the go kart that night. Apparently, he can usually get a few more MPH out of the kart, but the clutch was pretty worn. As we take industrial arts class in school, and check out a few mechanics books from the library, we learn that we can probably get it going around 30 MPH if we really wanted to.

And yes, we really wanted to.