Month: January 2014

There are days when you have to wonder what people were thinking before they did what they did and there are days when you know they were not thinking when they did what they did. Back in High School one of the coaches noticed there were far too many fireant hills in the field where we played football so he got out the tractor and dragged some old tries over the area to flatten everything out, which he did, quite perfectly.

So the next day when we went out to play football there were fireants scattered out over the entire area and none of them were very happy.  For those of you who have never met fireants they are small ants who pack a mean sting and they hate everyone all the time. They attack until they are killed or they kill what they’ve attacked. Everyone was stung many times so the coach in question decided, after declaring us all sissies and wimps, to kill the ants.

The coach in question goes out with a sprayer and sprays the entire area with gasoline and sets it on fire. The ants are killed certainly, but then we’re playing football on what seems to be the most toxic ground on earth. We stopped playing when we were fascinated by looking at our hands. A couple of guys got really sick. The smell of gas lingered for weeks.

Once we went back to class things got weird. No one owned two pairs of shoes back then so we all trooped back into the classroom smelling like the Exxon Valdez spill refined. The whole place smelled of gas there for a while, really.

And finally… the Great Shingle Caper.

We used an ancient World War Two Barracks building as a gym and the shingles on it were left over from when the Ark was dismantled. Whatever they used to put the shingles on the building was akin to super glue so they decided to soak the rooftop with, yep, you guessed it, gasoline! The whole of the gym was unlivable for weeks. But my, what a great looking roof we had on that building. They tore it down a couple of years later.

What’s your favorite “seemed like a good at the time” story? You get extra points if the government is involved and dead mice are attached to parachutes.

Take Care,
Mike

Mike writes regularly at his site:  The Hickory Head Hermit