Kids Don’t Try this at Home

Looking back on some of the stories I have committed to paper, I feel like I need to offer up a warning or two.

In part because those most likely to read these stories are the future generations of Vandermolens, and failing to offer a warning could significantly reduce the likelihood of Vandermolen’s roaming the planet in a couple of generations.  Heck, I could conceivably even be hauled to Hague, Netherlands on genocide charges.

Also because I have watched the so called evolution of what passes for civilization, and I realize that failing to provide a warning is leaving me wide open for a lawsuit, especially a class-action lawsuit.  And let’s be honest, given the content of some of these stories, the courts are going to side with the Plaintiffs strictly in order to cover up the courts’ earlier incompetence.

And finally, because while to the greatest degree the statute of limitations has lapsed on these stories, the acceptance of society has run out as well, and many of these if re-enacted today would land a person in jail.  

So, without further ado, the disclaimer:

Kids, don’t try any of these at home.  Or at school, church, or inside any man-made structure.  Don’t consider attempting any of these in a park (city, county, state, or federal), or anywhere outdoors for that matter.  But especially not on the roadways, highways, and byways of this great land, or any other great land.  Heck, not even any not so great lands, although if the land really sucks…., nope, nope, sorry, drifting there, forget that last thought.  And whatever you do, never, ever, try any of this sideways.

None of these things were ever tried by professionals (mostly because professionals are far too smart for any of this stupidity) and the enthusiastic amateurs who accomplished these feats, often did so at the expense of hair, hearing, blood, bumps, bruises, blisters, broken bones, damaged joints, poked eyes, lost toe and finger nails, and various other physical injuries and ailments.  As well as punishment from parents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, unassociated adults in the community, teachers, youth group leaders, ministers, police, rowdy drunks, pissed of gangsters, and various and assorted ne’er-do-wells in general. 

And while those punishments and wounds often lend a touch of humor in the re-telling, it never, ever, lent any humor in the doing.  Well, not for the doer anyway (an exception must be made for the observers who often found the process side-splittingly hilarious).

Many of these tales, simplified for the expedient recording for posterity, tend to downplay the sheer lunacy of the initial idea, the abject ignorance of the laws of physics, of nature, and of animal and human psychology involved.  Not to mention the potential for truly significant long term damage.  To animate and inanimate alike. 

Finally, no named or unnamed individual is to be held responsible for the purported deeds herein related.  The parents, grandparents, relatives, neighbors, and others are neither to blame nor responsible for failing with their truly ceaseless efforts to keep us three from killing ourselves or visiting destruction on the world around us.

You have been warned, no matter how good an idea seems now in the retelling, no matter how fun and or funny, no matter how much you would like to see your sibling writhing in pain or punished with excommunication from the civilized world, don’t try any of these yourselves.

 

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, all Rights Reserved