Sad, as in HaHa Sad, Not Boo Hoo Sad

I was watching truck racing last night on the Speed Channel. Actually killing time before Oceans Eleven came on.

Anyway, I saw an ad for Dodge trucks. With that pinhead (and former great driver) Darryl Waltrip. The ad featured a Dodge truck, towing a boat, jumping over something. Interesting.

At the bottom of the screen, came a disclaimer..'trained stunt drivers on a closed course, do not attempt this at home' or some such shit.

Same disclaimer came with another truck ad, showing a pick up towing a semi. Come on!

Pretty damn sad commentary on society when they have to WARN people that these aren't possible feats with the advertised vehicles..

But wait...

Since I'm a student of the 'prove it, show me' school of thought, I sure would like to see Joe Combine down the road from me jump his Dodge truck over something. Having a boat attached would be even better! I'd love it. Joe loves his truck and his boat, almost as much as he loves Mrs. Combine, so he wouldn't do it. But I bet that after a beer drinking session on the porch, he'd at least consider it. (The lovely Mrs. Combine would be less than pleased too. She'd be mighty shrill over that. Heh!)

I guess that is WHY there are disclaimers on car ads. For people like us.

When I was growing up, my best friends were the neighbor boy next door and my brother. We did all of the great kid stuff. In the summer, the folks turned us outside after our Frosted Sugar Smacks, and let us run til lunch. We went home, got fortified with grilled cheese or a bologna sandwich, then went back out into the world again. We had a creek near the house, at the ballfield no less. So we took our bikes to the creek and played there. Catching fish, building forts in the woods, and making boats, then bombing the shit out of the boats with rocks.

Quite often we were grounded to the yard for some homeland transgression, but the big backyard wasn't a bad gulag, and we counted the alley behind the house as yard too. We would ride our bikes up and down the alley. Quite often, we'd build ramps to jump the bikes off. Bear in mind, Evil Knevil was in his heyday at this point in time, and we all thought he was THE SHIT. We all wanted to be him. We built ramps for the bikes, we built ramps for sleds (snow and ice ramps) and we'd jump almost anything. I remember very vividly the great burr bush jump. We built a ramp into the field, over this huge, very prickly burr bush. I don't recall any of us actually clearing the bush, but I do remember burrs in everyone's hair, on their clothes, the whole bit. And now, we never used helmets. Only football players wore helmets, not kids on bikes.

Wait! Yes we did. Someone saw jousting on television one time. The whole concept of charging each other on horseback with big sticks was thrilling! So we set about to joust. With brooms. On bikes. My brother had a Redskins football helmet, and the neighbor boy had a Colts helmet. Since I was a girl, I had no helmet, so we switched around.

I don't recall the results of the joust, but I am thinking that at some point an adult stepped in and shut it down.

I am remembering lots more stunts we did, and it's a wonder any of us made it to 15.

The neighbor boy is a real estate agent now. I wonder if he remembers the stuff we used to do as kids?