#72. or, nobody died

 Some of the new blogger friends that i have are doing this thing called the A-Z Challenge. Basically, you are supposed to post your way through April, with each post being something related to the next sequential letter of the alphabet. I actually thought about doing this quite a lot. In the end, because it's getting to be a pretty busy time of year for me, i decided against it. Still though, i've been trying to keep up on reading the posts of some of the people that i've recently started following.

  One of those people is Bozo, over at a bozo's abbozzo..... She lives in India and for the letter "I" blog, she posted about India. Mostly, it's a video of some of the funny, crazy stuff that happens there.

  I think that every country has a video on the internet about their quirks that other people watch and laugh about. In this India video, i was taken by the trains. The ones that are not only packed full of people on the inside, but also, every available piece of real estate on the outside of the train has people jammed onto it as well. They look like giant woolly bear caterpillars rolling across the country side. I thought that's pretty messed up and dangerous, who in their right mind would do something like that? Then, i though about some of the things we did while i was growing up as a kid.

  Before it became illegal, in the summer, we always rode in the box of the truck when we went to check fields and pastures. It wasn't unusual to see a pick-up rolling down the road with a couple smiling faces peeking out around the cab. It was great fun, wind in your face, eyes watering, until you got twapped in the forehead by a bumble bee.

  I can remember my Dad, pulling us down the road, on our toboggan, tied to the bumper of the truck with 30 feet of rope. No helmets, no titanium skid plates sewn into our clothes, Not even any leather. The only thing protecting our head from bouncing off the frozen gravel road was our tuques and scarves. We'd go for miles, coming home all smiles and frozen snot-sickles.

  We had a camper that fit on the back of the truck that we used on holidays. Because we were a family of four, and my Uncle sometimes came with us, the truck cab was often full. That meant one of us kids got to ride in the camper. It had windows that opened between the truck and camper so you could pile up the cushions from the camper and lay facing forward to look into the truck cab and be part of the conversations. Perfect, in the event of an accident, to be guillotined when the windows became un-alligned.

  Our family car had that shelf between the rear seat and the back window. If you were an 8 year old kid, it was great to lay up there and watch the traffic out the back window. It was also an exceptional launching pad for when your dad had to slam on the brakes for one reason or another.

  We didn't wear helmets when we drove mini-bikes, or bicycle helmets when we rode bicycles. We made ramps out of plywood and rotten lumber that more often were more dangerous because they fell to pieces when you hit them, than from actually launching you into the air. We rode on tractor fenders, and grabbed onto bumpers and skidded along behind the car on our boots on the ice in the winter. We got bumped and bruised, we ate dirt, we broke bones, (not me personally) we sprained things, and sometimes we we had teeth knocked loose. But it never seemed out of the ordinary.

  ...........Oh, as much fun as it sounds, no good ever comes from pulling a bicycle behind a motorcycle with a rope. We tried it.......twice.