After seeing the way that maple syrup is harvested on Sesame Street, I poisoned myself. My family had a pine tree in the front yard. During the summer it would ooze out sap. I scooped up a dollup with my index finger. I sucked it off my finger like it was honey. My stomach was pumped for what seemed like hours at the Barnes Hospital emergency room.

One year when I was seven or eight I lost five pairs of shoes. One incident in particular was right after a heavy thunderstorm. Blake, David, (two brothers who lived on my block) and I were playing down by the empty field near our school. The baseball diamond turned into a mud puddle. While fetching a ball that landed in the middle of it, one of my shoes got vacuumed into the dirty mire. My mom greeted me at the front door and asked where my missing shoe was. My reply "Oh, thats why my sock is wet."

Since both my parents worked, my mom arranged to have my sister and I to stay with this lady during office hours in the summer. Being grade schoolers she didn't trust us to hang at home on our own. Seeing as I was a hyper sugar freak maniac she was probably right. This lady, I think we all called her Grannie Annie, had ten to twelve kids to look after at a time, including her two nephews who lived next door in the adjoining unit of the duplex. The two nephews Jason and Jake I think, and two of the other boys in the crowd decided to form a gang. We couldn't have a gang without initiation rites. First round was to jump off of this garage across the street from the duplex. No sweat. Next day we all had to jump off the roof of the duplex, which was three stories tall. I volunteered to go first. My family was kinda outdoorsy, and I had been rock climbing and the like, so I knew how to land. There was a deep green patch of grass that looked soft. I sucked in a bounty of oxygen, stopped listening to my heart pounding in my ear and leapt. I hit the ground, let my knees go, and tucked into a roll on the ground, hooting and hollering about how cool that was. Upon my urging, the next guy took his leap of faith. Hit the ground like a javelin, and fucked his ankles up. He was screaming like a monkey with its tail stapled to the floor. Everyone else was ushered off the roof by Grannie. The next day we (sans the injured soldier) decided that the entrance exam was imcomplete. So we decided that we all had to jump out of the tall oak in the lot behind the back yard. Again I volunteered to go first. While hanging from the tallest branch I could possibly access, I started thinking it wasn't so smart to tempt fate and plummet to the ground again. I ended up thinking too long and my arms got weak and I had to let go anyway. On the way down branches grabbed at me like cats claws. My belly looked like a river map of Minnesota. I landed with a thud, knocked the wind outta me, nothin broke. It was decided that the initiations were complete.

Sophomore year of high school Darby, Hiram, Keith and I decided we were going to have a good time at the affluent mall Chesterfield. After seeing Ferris Bueller's Day Off we scanned the parking lot for loot. We were in search of hood ornaments, in particular Mercedes, so we could wear them around our neck on a chain. As is my curse I volunteered to go first. Ripped one off no problem. Darby went next and he also snagged one without a hitch. Hiram creeped up on his quarry. The rest of us noticed mall security driving up, and started hand signaling Hiram to speed the fuck up. His ornament had a cluster of wires attached to it and he was struggling trying to seperate it from the hood. Just as he finally popped it out the security took notice and chased Hiram. He dove into the open window of Keith's car and we sped away with Hiram's ass dangling out. Eluding the mall cops, we were feeling ornery. Hollering out of the car at any girls we thought deserved the attention. One girl flipped us off. We circled around and I doused her with a giant blue Slurpee I had. We couldn't stop laughing seeing the girl froze in her tracks gaping at the blue mess her outfit had become.