The Best Laid Schemes Gang Aft Agley
Or maybe I should call this “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.”
A coworker whose son is autistic related the story of a local minor league ballpark that had a special event for autistic kids. Very low admission, autographs on the field, cheap hot dogs, that sort of wholesome family stuff. A great day was had and appreciated by all…until, that is, they got to the end of the game and the team decided to end the day with a fireworks display. Baaaaaad idea.
And that reminded me of a story of my own. In the mid-70s some friends of ours hosted an eight or ten year old girl for the summer on one of these International Student/Child Exchange programs that were so in vogue then. And we all did our part to make her feel at home and to experience a ‘normal’ american life in the mid 70s. So, it being summer, we took her to our town’s 4th of July fireworks display. As soon as the boomers started she screamed and dove underneath our Dodge MaxiWagon.
And then we remembered she was from Belfast…
Any other good tales, folks?
Fun | Mr. Bingley | 
March 24, 2005 3:03 pm
Subscribe
Yeah, but that was not as bad as what she looked like when Geri(sp?) let off with his homemade cannon! hehe
Or when the fire alarms went off in our bootcamp barracks in Parris Island. Everybody troops dutifully outside, lines up, gets counted repeatedly and we’re still missing a body. The DI’s go back in and find the recruit hiding under the bunkbeds. It took some serious talking to get her to crawl out. Seems where she’d grown up ~ Beirut ~ alarms meant:
Incoming! Dive, dive, dive…
I’d forgotten about Gerry’s cannon. It was some big honking brass beast he had milled in his workshop, wasn’t it?
Of course, we can’t think of Gerry without mentioning the time we shot skeet in his backyard right after Jean hung up their clothes to dry on the line…hehehe, you’ve never seen clothes with so many holes in them.
Yup, brass he had milled hisself.
Though this was still not as bad as heading into the mountains of Ecuador in a borrowed Lada, and not knowing how to change a tire…..
Who knew they had locking hubs and no one had the key?
Of course, had we thought to look in the ashtray…
Mr. B, auto parts theft was rampant in the USSR because of their piss-poor distribution system. One thing you would notice on a rainy day in Moscow (back when there was such a country as the USSR), is that all the drivers would be getting out their windshield wipers from the trunk before pulling away from the curb. They were easy to steal and worth their weight in gold on the black market.