This Is Why My Body Is Falling Apart Today

Tonight, my daughter told me she needed my help with a school assignment. Being the incredible, uber-cool dad and spectacular all-around person that I am, I was more than happy to assist. She told me to have a seat and pulled out a notebook. She then reminded me that I had once told her I wanted to be a stuntman when I grew up. This is true and I would have been awesome.

I was the oldest of three boys living in the country. My mother has lots of entertaining stories about the horrors that we put her through. We weren't bad kids; we just loved adventure and the more dangerous the activity, the bigger the thrill. I have blogged about some of these adventures before. Living where we did, we had access to motorcycles, tractors, barn lofts, train tracks and all sorts of things to climb on. We were always climbing and jumping and pushing things a little bit further than most kids.

The crazy things we were doing were difficult enough for my mother to handle, but in 1981 things got much worse (or more fun, depending on how you look at it). That was the year The Fall Guy premiered on ABC.

The Fall Guy starred Lee Majors (3 years after $6 Million Man) as a top Hollywood stuntman who got caught up in all sorts of crazy capers. In addition to foiling crimes and hanging out with beautiful women, he did spectacular stunts for movies in every episode. He would jump off buildings, crash cars, get set on fire and tons of other cool stuff I couldn't wait to try out. Add this show to the fact that I had already been watching Bo and Luke speeding along in the General Lee on The Dukes of Hazzard for 2 years and I was hooked. When my dad rented Burt Reynold's stuntman movie Hooper that same year, there was no stopping me.

YEE-HAW!!!

As the oldest, my younger brothers followed along, which I didn't mind because when one of us got hurt, it was quite handy to have someone available to run and get Mom. Luckily, the injuries were rarely serious. I will cover some of the more grievous injuries in a future post. We had always been daring, but now it was time to actually do things that most people would get injured doing. Before the dream of being a stuntman, I would climb to the top of the barn and stand on the peak just for the fear in my mother's eyes thrill. After I knew what my future had in store for me, I would jump off. Of course, I had to build up to that.

We started jumping off the pig barns. One of the barns was about 6 feet tall on one end and a little over 10 feet on the other. We jumped off the low end until we felt that we had the roll technique down and would move our way up to higher and higher parts of the roof. We eventually graduated to the roof of our house and even started jumping out the second story windows of our bedrooms.

Once we were old enough to drive, we practiced getting hit by cars. We started with cars that sat lower to the ground so we could roll over the hood easier. When we decided we had it down to our satisfaction, we would take the hit at 5 mph faster. We increased the speed higher and higher until we knew we could really freak people out by getting run down in a public place (which we did whenever we saw the opportunity).

One day after school, I was taking my friend John home and as we drove around the corner of the building, he said, "Hey, isn't that your brother, Trevor?" I looked, agreed that it was him and hit the gas. I sped across the parking lot and hit him with the passenger corner of my bumper. His legs got swept up, he went over the hood and his back crashed into my windshield. I locked up the brakes and he slid off the front in a heap.

John was freaking out while I got the subtle nod from Trevor that he was okay. As John was trying to help him up, I was screaming about the damage to my broken windshield. I kicked Trevor, drug John back into the car and sped off. The reaction we got from John was worth the months of practice and cost of a new windshield.

As I am telling story after story, my daughter was writing as fast as she could. By this time, her friend Taylor had shown up at our house and she interjected to question the truth to some of the stories, but Kirsten assured her that she had heard them before from both my brothers and our mother. They were true.

Fire Stunt Tip: Diesel burns slower
than gasoline, but it is much hotter.

Taylor made the comment that her dad would never tell her some of the stories I had just shared, even if they were true. It then occurred to me that she had a point. I wasn't just telling old stories of my younger days, I was talking to my daughter, who I am supposed to protect. I had just told her about how we would set each other on fire and run for the nearest body of water. She now knows that we hopped moving trains and jumped from car to car. I told her how we rode our bicycles off the roofs of houses and climbed underneath moving vehicles. These are not the kinds of stories my kids need to hear.

It is rather difficult to tell my daughter that she shouldn't drive her car up steep embankments (just to see how far it can go before it flips), when I had just told her how much fun it was. I had not been paying attention as I told my stories and forgot who my audience was, but now that I was aware of the situation I changed gears.

Me: "If you even think about doing any of the things I just talked about, you will never leave this house again!"

Kirsten: "Oh, don't worry about that, Dad. I am much smarter than you."