Why did they do that? Why did I do that?

I often sit back and watch people and wonder what were they thinking?  I also look at old photos of myself and say what was I thinking?  This applies to fashion, some of the people I dated, some of the things that I did...and lived through.  In the 13th section of the Doctrine and Covenants it says one of the blessings of the Aaronic Priesthood is the administering of angels.  The older I get the more I am convinced that these are guardian angels whose sole job is to keep teenage boys alive.  I do not know a single adult man that does not have a story where they should have been killed as a teenager.  I am not talking doing heroic types of things to save others.  Oh know I am talking doing really stupid things because in a teenage boys brain the laws of physics, good judgment and common sense simply don't exist.  There are entire websites and TV shows devoted to capturing these moments on film for posterity.  It is not my goal to encourage this behavior but I would like to give parents home that you are not alone.  All of the following examples are things that I was either a witness to, participated in or had a 2nd person verify they are true.

• This one is a favorite.  One of my cousins who went to a predominantly Hispanic populated school (over 80% Mexican) on career day dressed up as a border patrol officer.  I was told he got called to the principles office and sent home.  It might have been because his brother was also dressed up as an illegal alien.

• I was with a family member who was working in an apple orchard and this really low (a couple of hundred yards off the ground)  flying military transport plane flew over head on a training flight.  They had done this 6-7 times that morning and he got tired of it so he got out his 22 rifle and put 4-5 shots into the plane.  It immediately started to climb and it was not 20 minutes and there were police, military cars the works crawling all over that hill. 

• While was on a camp out as a boy one of the older scout wanted to show me how pine pitch (sap) burned really well and was a great fire starter.  So he walked over to a tree and lit some of it on fire.  Of course it was on the tree, it sent the whole tree up in flames.  2 hours later we got the fire under control.

• While on a scout outing as boy our Scoutmaster set up a zip line with a hand held pulley.  We climbed the hill side and spent hours sliding down this rope.  There was a small pine sapling that was in front of the large tree the rope was tide to at the bottom of the run.  We would hit this sapling every time we came down the rope.  One of the scouts got tired of it so he cut it down.  Our Scoutmaster said you should probably not do that.  The scout made some comment about killing a live tree and kept cutting.  He ran to the top of the zip line and came flying down and smacked hard into the tree the line was tied to.  Our scoutmaster chose that spot because the sapling acted like a brake.  As the scout laid on the ground hurt and bleeding the scoutmaster sat there drinking hot chocolate and said you probably should not have cut that tree down. 

• When I was in the 5th grade we had a Saturday afternoon BBQ.  The food was done and I wanted to cook marshmallows.  However the fire was not hot enough so I took a gallon of gas and dumped a bunch on the hot coals.  It started to smoke heavily so I tossed in a match.  The fumes exploded and I got burned really bad.  My face started to blister and my parents called the ambulance.  I woke up  in the hospital a few hours later.  I was in face and chest bandages for weeks.  I also got to miss the last 6 weeks of school that year.

• When I was a kid on my grandparents Dairy they had a bull that was so mean they bolted a metal plate to his horns to cover his eyes so he had to lift his head to see.  This prevented him from charging and made him safer to be around.  My uncle (with children) told us not to mess with the bull.  My uncle (with no children) showed us how to run up to the bull beat on the metal plate and run.  He was very clear that you don't run in a straight line you have to zigzag or all 2000 pounds of angry bull will tear you apart. 

These are just a few items that I am aware of there are many more that I will take to my grave and my children shall never hear of.  I don't want them trying to duplicate what I did.  I want them to come up with their own unique ways of doing stupid things.  It is really part of growing up.