Having no siblings and growing up in the middle of nowhere, t'was very easy for boredom to set in and the imagination to...wander. In any child food and sleep run secondary to amusement. Ahh, the quest to amuse ourselves. Running around the house naked didn't work, nobody would start shrieking which of course, GIVES the amusement. The only onlookers are of the bovine breed and they were probably mooing "Oh my God, I've gone blind".
Jumping off the roof, putting ramjet bullets (used in quickly killing cattle) in the vice and squeezing until BANG (or throwing a whole bunch into the incinerator...) were just some of the things one could do to amuse oneself on boring weekends.
The real fun occurred when my best mate would be around for the weekend.
Mother would use what we called spider fences to fence off various parts of the farm. Like a normal fence there were wires (all hot which gave a nice kick, NB: DO NOT PISS ON A HOT FENCE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Try to imagine getting kicked...repeatedly in the testicles by a donkey!) normally 3 wires, the unique thing is the posts. Not made of posts (saving the environment), but of fibreglass (not saving the environment...). So putting up a fence was much quicker and easier since putting the fibreglass rods in the ground was much simpler than digging a huge hole to China and back to put in the traditional fence post.
Fibreglass rods have a couple of unique properties. First and foremost is that if you don't wear 15 layers of gloves your hands will be itching like a really itching thing for the rest of your natural born life. Secondly and most importantly for our amusement is that they are strong yet....flexible with a tendency to snap back...
Dawson and myself first used these new space age technology to make swords, and then we'd try and kill each other with them. (I think the only thing we did kill was a rooster, chased it for ages, got it in the cowshed, Dawson went one way I went the other, came around the corner and all swordplay when out my head and I just swung like a baseball player, BLAT, Dawson and co. 1, Roosters 0).
The thing with using these rods as swords was...no guard. With this in mind I'd regularly slide my 'sword' down his and splat, right into his hands, haha, what a bastard. It happened once, sorry. Twice, sorry. Third....Dawson: "Oh #$%# this" and in a fit of rage threw his 'sword' into the ground. I start laughing like a chimpanzee, and even more when (remember fibreglass rods are flexible) his sword rebounded from the ground and flew straight back up into his head! WHACK. Oh crap that was funny. Dawson hits the ground in a wail of pain (there was even a little bit of blood), I think to this day he's still fearful of throwing stuff when he's pissed off.
Well that was toy one with fibreglass rods. Bearing in mind they are flexible we felt we weren't using them to their full potential. After watching Robin Hood, (light bulb...ON, ding!) BOWS!
We made bows from them with a bit of bailing twine. Brought a few real arrows from the friendly local corner hunting shop. New game! Fire arrow straight up into the air. When it comes down stick your foot out. Whoever can get their foot closest to the arrow (without impaling your foot to the ground wins.) Oh, the hours of amusement...not really. Amusement stopped when Dawson loaded an arrow, pulled back (arrow in the down position) and slipped. Arrow goes flying at point blank into my FOOT!
Dawson of course is pissing himself laughing, and the only thing I can say in a dumbfounded dazed phrase was "Dude...you shot me...in the foot" with of course, the arrow sticking out of my boot and foot.
After writing this I now wonder...did he slip or was it revenge for the sliding sword trick?
