I Should Be Dead

If I had been born into a wealthy family, I probably would have never come so close to death so often. While we never had to do without food or electricity, we were far from being considered wealthy. This was partly because my dad did not want to exercise his right to get cheap housing and live on a military base with his family. To be honest, I think he was afraid to live on base. And I don’t think anyone who knew the Poole family would have blamed him. You see, the military had this very effective method for ensuring peace and tranquility on base: they punished the enlisted personnel for any crimes or misdemeanors by their family. This meant that my dad would be punished for any infractions on base that were caused by his children.

Therefore, he took his small housing allowance and used it to buy or rent a home off base. This decision did make it difficult for him at times. Mom told us how Dad would go fishing after he was finished with his duties on base each day. If he caught fish, we would eat fish. If not, we would eat tomato sandwiches. He must have been a pretty good fisherman, because I think all that fish ruined my taste buds for fish.

On the other hand, Bonnie, my older sister must have remembered more tomato days. Even as a teen, she would do whatever she could to hide tomatoes at dinnertime and hope nobody noticed before she could throw them out. Sometimes she would simply scoop those little cherry tomatoes into her lap. Sometimes she tried to hide the tomato slices under her plate. She was caught once when she put her napkin over her plate and said, “I’m finished, may I leave the table?”

My dad had his own ideas about dinnertime etiquette. If you make a face at some green goop or made a sound of disgust at the liver, he would make sure that you got extra helpings. When he discovered that Bonnie had been hiding her tomatoes, he decided that she would sit at the table until she ate all of them from her plate. Bonnie claims that after she threw-up once while trying to force them down, Dad let her leave the table and never again tried to force her to eat tomatoes. Dad claims that she finally gave in and ate her tomatoes, so he decided not to force them on her anymore. We may never know which story is true, but Bonnie still refuses to eat tomatoes.

Being poor never really fazed us. We still did most of the same things that other children our age did, we just had to find creative ways to do that. My brother and I seemed to excel at finding creative ways to deal with our lack of financial funds. As with most boys, one of our favorite games was baseball. Baseballs were not that expensive in the 1970s, but we never seemed to have one when we needed one.

One day we came up with this idea for a baseball replacement. Now, you need to understand that there is still some continuing disagreement as to whose idea it actually was. My brother said I had the idea and I distinctly remember that it was his idea. Regardless of whose idea it was, I know that my brother gave me the distinct privilege of batting first, which I believe proves my point that this was all his idea. So there I was standing with our beat up aluminum baseball bat in my dusty hands.

“Don’t make it too hard to hit, James,” I whined as he walked out to pitch to me.

“Oh, come on, you wimp,” James shouted back at me. “It’s a basketball. How hard can it be to hit a basketball?”

That was a good question. It shouldn’t be that difficult to hit a ball that is about ten times the size of a baseball. It wasn’t that I was bad at baseball. I actually was a very good hitter. I usually played cleanup batter on my little league team. But older brothers always seem to take joy in making everything difficult for their younger siblings. And since I was the only younger sibling that James had, I knew that he would not make the pitch easy to hit regardless of what size target I would be swinging at with my bat. And since we did not wear any protective gear, I was more concerned about getting hit with the ball. But getting hit in the head with the ball should have been the least of my concerns.

“All right,” James called to everyone, “get ready.” And he threw the basketball directly at the plate. This was perhaps the best pitch he had ever handed to me. The ball came floating directly down the line. I took my best batter’s stance, reared back with all of my Babe-Ruth-wannabe strength and swung the bat right at the center of that ball.

It happened so fast I had no time to react. The aluminum bat hit the rubberized skin of the basketball and proved a law of physics that we had yet to learn. The aluminum bat ricochet off of the rubberized basketball and bounced back directly into my head.

I have to give my brother some credit. Unlike those people who stand around with a video camera laughing at the person they are videoing as they roll around on the ground groaning in pain, my brother only laughed for a few seconds. I think the blood soaking my hair may have worried him a little, but whatever the reason, he actually showed some concern for me. I would one day appreciate that, but that was not the day.

“You stupid idiot,” I yelled. I of course said this with as much anger as I could muster in order to keep from crying in front of all of our friends. “What a stupid idea you had. Let’s use a basketball. How could you be so stupid?”

That ended my brothers fifteen seconds of concern. He started laughing at me again as he said, “Hey, I am not the stupid kid who hit a basketball with an aluminum bat.”

He did have a point. So let me share the same important lesson with you that I have shared with my own boys: Never try to hit a basketball with a baseball bat, especially an aluminum bat. Sadly, that was not the most stupid thing we ever did with a baseball bat.

Recently, while watching a television episode of MythBusters with my sons, I was able to refute one of the scientific findings as Adam Savage attempted to prove or bust a famous escape scene from a MacGyver television episode. The reason I could refute it was because I had actually attempted one of those things they are always telling their viewers not to attempt at home.

I cannot remember if this incident was before or after the famous, yet extremely short, baseball game using a basketball. I don’t guess it matters either way because apparently I was never smart enough to learn from my failures. This incident also involved an aluminum baseball bat. It also involved a live bullet that one of us found on the ground in our neighborhood.

Most sensible people would let their parents know when they find a bullet lying on the ground in an urban area, but sensible rarely makes for interesting stories. Besides, nobody ever accused my brother or me of being sensible. At some point, someone dared each of us to hit the bullet with the baseball bat. Being a group of unsupervised preteen boys, we couldn’t allow a dare to go unchallenged. So each of us took our turn whacking the end of the bullet with an aluminum bat.

This would have been fine if Adam Savage had been correct when he stated that it is impossible to strike a bullet with a flat service, such as the butt of a pistol, and cause it to fire. Adam said that you must have a point of some kind to strike the firing mechanism of the bullet. Granted, a bat is not flat, but it is also not pointed. And yet fire the bullet we did. Actually, I did.

It was on my turn as the other boys stood in a circle around this bullet that I swung with all of my might and we all jumped back from the repercussion of the bullet firing. The bullet was aimed directly at a spot between two houses across the street from our yard. And right behind those homes was the Beltway teeming with cars speeding home from work. It is a miracle that none of the stupid preteen boys standing in that circle where injured. We looked around at each other, eyes big, mouths hanging open, for only a split second before every one of us scattered to get as far away from that baseball bat as possible.

As James and I entered our house, I think the bat was still rocking slightly on the ground. We tore into the living room just as my mom asked, “What was that noise?”

I looked into my brother’s pale, blood-drained face. My brain had quit working. Words would not come out. How could we get out of this one? My dad would find out and we would finally be shipped off to military school for sure. Just as I was about to admit to the incredibly stupid action, James shrugged his shoulders and said, “Maybe a car backfired.”