Where's Adam? I'll Kill Him!

First. The funniest thing I have heard in a good time. (A good time being roughly three months or a fortnight.)

While doing Board Review questions during Morning Report one day on medicine wards we got to a peculiar question:

You are given report of a a 32 year old man who awoke from sleep to find a bat lying on the floor next to his bed...

Everyone's immediate answer to the question not yet asked was, "examine the man for bat bites!" to evaluate for rabies. We thought ourselves pretty smart for knowing the connection between rabies and bats, but then we were told, as the question progressed, that he had no evidence of being bitten. So as everyone stirred briefly reconsidering their choices, someone else in the room shouted out, "examine the bat for human bites!"

I am probably the only one who laughed at that and yet I am content with it.

But to the point. Another fireworks story. Or, if you know my family, *the* fireworks story.

Some background. My birthday is the day before the Fourth of July. One year, some year that will remain unspecified in a place unspecified, my brother and a cousin of mine, Matthew, decided to light some of our firework stash off the day before in celebration. It was all uneventful till we got to one particular firework, the UFO.

The story. I am still not sure what the UFO is. I suppose that's why it's called the UFO. It appeared to just be a brick with a fuse. Or maybe a deck of cards wrapped in a cheap wrapper with a small rubber dome on one side and piece of string dangling from the other. Whatever it was, not knowing what it was or what it would do did not stop us from lighting it. First the fuse burned down slowly as one would expected. Then, while on the ground, it began spinning tight circles on the cement not as one would expect. And finally, as it was inevitably going to do, it shot off straight into the sky with such speed that we really had no idea which direction it flew off into. It did this, however, only after bursting into flames. That, it turns out, is a UFO.

Concerned that sending a ball of fire into the air on a warm summer day could be potentially dangerous we temporarily stopped our firework lighting festivities and set about the yard and surrounding area looking for any signs of its remains. After about 5 - 10 minutes of completely uneventful searching we decided that no answer was a good answer and so resumed our previous activities. It would be another 10 - 15 minutes before we heard a middle aged Hispanic woman call out from the street below, "Sir! Sir! Your house is on fire!"

I was apparently the only one who heard the lady because I was the only one who looked up to see that, indeed, a small patch of our roof was going up in flames. I passed word on to my brother and cousin and off we were to find whatever it was we could find to put it out. For my brother and cousin that meant grabbing the hose and throwing my cousin onto the roof. For me that meant running for the fire extinguisher I remembered seeing in the camper out in front of the house. For the roofer that just happened to be passing by and somehow saw the smoke, that meant leaping over the fence and joining my cousin atop the burning shingles. Despite all the immediate excitement it was a relatively tiny fire, maybe a foot by two or three feet, and it was quickly doused by the unstoppable combination of garden hose and fire extinguisher. Within a few minutes the excitement was over. The firefighting, however, apparently was not.

We watered the embers a bit more, poked around a bit, and then waited for our family to come home. The Super Roofer gave us some advice, gave us his card, and then promptly went back to his secret lair. It was about twenty to thirty minutes before anyone got back, that being my brother-in-law Patrick. With my brother conveniently in the bathroom at the time it was left to me and my cousin to inform him of the news. "Ok, Patrick. Don't freak out, but we had a small problem. We kind of lit the roof on fire -- but we put it out it's ok!" His immediate response? "Adam! Did Adam do this?! I'll kill him!" We calmly explained that we were all collectively guilty and so, in time, he calmed down. It was now time to call the firefighters apparently. I am not sure why this was necessary -- the fire had been out for a good half hour -- but call the fire department we did, and in no time they were out, atop the roof, and carving a 6 foot by 4 foot hole in it.

The threat of fire was still not over with, though. After the crashing of fire hatchets came the flow of hundreds of gallons of water pouring through the now gaping hole and, as it saturated and then tore through the ceiling, into the dining room. And so the day was saved. Or made entirely worse I suppose we will never know. Either way, their jobs being done the fire fighters went back to their secret lair, we were given a stern talking to by the fire marshal, and that was that. That evening we celebrated my birthday at the Spaghetti Factory, and enjoyed ourselves some spumoni ice cream. A month later my family had a new roof and new set of recessed track lighting. The firefighters, I'm sure, enjoyed swinging their axes at things. Everyone agreed, it was the best birthday ever.

Twenty Pounds of Good Times

Since I do not much care to talk about the residency business, or rather I can tolerate only so much of my own complaining, I will instead.... reminisce? For when I have Alzheimer's. (Or, if I am so fortunate, just regular old senile dementia.)

First, stories with fireworks.

Or, alternatively, a you-probably-had-to-be-there story.

My family and extended families exploded out from California sometime in the early 1990s. Before that time the various cousins and grandparents and what have you hung out rather regularly. At least when it came to the holidays. Once people started moving, though, things changed. We saw each other once or twice a year in a good year. So when one New Year's came around and two of my cousins from California came out to visit us in Arkansas there was reason for celebration. Specifically celebration with black powder and white phosphorus. The end receipts of our firework buying binge totaled some $80+ dollars of a variety of works ranging from bottle rockets to Roman candles, firecrackers to smoke bonds, Piccalo Petes to sunflowers, sparklers, flashers, bangers, zip zang zowzers, and my personal favorite, the Saturn Missile Battery. Our pièce de résistance, however, was a big pipe bomb of a rocket. It was designed, or so the advertisments said, to achieve lift off with great pagentry, release a half dozen plastic paratrooper commandos, and then explode at altitude in a palm shaped shower of flaming heavy metals.

For hours on New Year's Eve we got our jollys from blowing up pieces of our Aunt and Uncle's driveway, and despite all these shenanigans no one was injured. Until we got to the rocket. A bit scared of what exactly it would do, especially if it launched straight into someone's kisser, we were a bit timid in lighting it. My brother, Adam, somehow then got assigned the role. Slowly inching up to the rocket on it's appropriate rocket launching pad (a large sheet of cardboard placed to make cleanup of firework ash easier) he lit it at full reach while we all eagerly watched on from the other corners of the drive way. Once the fuse lit he bolted and ran properly for his life. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to him and the rest of us one of his legs had been firmly stationed on the cardboard launching pad. As he shifted off of it the cardboard base shifted as well and down went the rocket.

For a brief second there was an idle panic as we all yelled or shouted whatever we thought it was appropriate to yell and shout at the time. And for perhaps another second there was consideration of whether there was enough fuse time to go right the missile so that it would go correctly off on its course. But those few seconds passed and a more proper mindset took over. We all fled in whichever direction we thought best which of course was any direction the rocket was not facing. I, myself, a bit gimpy at the time, had to hobble my escape. After a few paces (or hops) the rocket achieved lift off, and we were left to face what fate and physics had in store for us. It shot off much as one would imagine a tipped over rocket to shoot off which is namely fast and straight, but it shortly reached its first obstacle. That being the garage. It ricocheted off the door and surprisingly, quickly then came back at us. For the next several moments it scuttled around the drive way unable to obtain elevation or escape from the gravely textured hold of its surface while we generally ran about losing our minds. At some point, I don't know how long, the rocket finally founds it feet and shot off into who knows what direction to explode harmlessly, hopefully, somewhere in the distance. Its paratrooper payload was scattered off who knows where likely in the backyards of scattered neighbors.

After that our pulses settled and we finished off the evening exploding a few more things here. The next day, clearly not having learned our lessons, we spent the morning throwing fire crackers at one another. It was awesome.