Five funny thoughts and ideas that I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve had

I’m trying to do something positive every day as I go through the pandemic’s social distancing. Today I thought I’d write about some of the worst decisions I made as a child and adolescent. Originally, this was going to be about the worst decisions I’ve ever made, but that just got sad so I decided to keep it lighthearted.

5. Trying to do a backflip — I was probably 22 at the time and I was at the break wall in Petoskey, MI. For those of you that don’t know, the break wall is a large dock made of cement that breaks the waves before the hit the city’s shoreline and boats. There is about a six foot drop into the water and it’s fun to jump into in the summer. The water is deep, cold, and when there are waves it’s like a natural wave pool. Anyway, I am not, nor have I ever been an athletic boy, but there were some people backflipping off the dock into the water. I wanted to try so they gave me some suggestions and eventually many people were watching me. Their main suggestion was to just go wholeheartedly into it, throw your arms back, and not chicken out as you go backwards. I got nervous and just sort of fell backwards, six feet, on my back, into the water. It hurt for a few days.

4. Sliding down the stairs on a plastic air mattress — I don’t remember why, but one day when I was a teenager the air mattress was blown up upstairs in my living area. A twin air mattress is roughly the same size as our stairway so I thought “it sounds like fun to slide down the stairs on that thing”. I prepared to slide down the stairs, head first, and let myself go. Within less than a second I realized what a horrible decision I had made. You see the plastic air mattress going down the stairs at a 45 degree angle had no friction whatsoever so I immediately started going top speed. I launched my arms out as hard as I could to prevent myself from moving which prevented me from cracking my head open. The problem was that if I let go, I was going to start flying. As my hands got sweaty and I started slipping downwards I was trying to think my way out of this I eventually just started screaming and my Dad came to save me from my predicament.

3. The stupidest thought I’ve ever had — one day I was driving home, listening to one of my favorite songs, and I started thinking about my desk at work. I remembered throwing my keys on my desk in the morning and I thought “did I grab my car keys off my desk?” — I was driving at the time *facepalm*

2. Creating the BIGGEST water balloon just to watch it pop — So… most water balloons are pretty small, they’re the size of your hand so you can chuck them at people. I thought it might be a good idea to fill up a party balloon with water, one that can grow to the size of your head, and then bring it up the stairs to throw out of a second story window. As my brother was carrying it up the stairs, it popped and the water went everywhere. I was like “well, we had a towel wrapped around it!”

My brother and I spent the rest of the day with dehumidifiers and towels trying to dry up the gallon of water out of the carpeted stairs.

1. Rolling around like a ball in the back of a van — growing up, my father owned a rental car agency at a local airport. He owned many cars to rent to tourists and those cars needed to be cleaned, it was just good customer service. So he hired my brother and I to wash the cars. There was this one type of minivan that you could fold all of the seats perfectly into the floor to fit more stuff inside of the van. So one day we took the van to the garage where we washed the cars, folded all of the seats down, and from the road to the garage one of us would gun it while the other one rolled around in the back after the driver hit the brakes. It was really fun, but I’m surprised I didn’t break my spine.