27 silly moments in the spirit of turning 27 today

I’m turning 27 today, so I guess I should start acting like an adult now, but on second thought I think I'll keep putting that off for a couple of more years.

So to celebrate refusing to grow up, here’s 27 of my more youthful, silly, stupid moments. Some from back in the day, others from yesterday.

1 – Sleeping in a hotel parking lots because I refused to pay for a room

2- Peeing in my room’s air vent because walking across the hall way was just too far to go to the bathroom.

3- Throwing all my sisters rings in the swimming pool because she made me mad and I couldn’t express my feelings in words.

4- Mooning… a lot of people, in a lot of different places, why? Because who doesn’t want to see my butt?

5 – Putting a baseball through my dad’s store window because to me it was a hockey puck (the ball that is, not the window) and the cane I was using as a hockey stick gave me just a little too much “lift”

6 – Putting battery operated Christmas lights in my 74 Volkswagen beetle because I love Christmas so much I wanted to celebrate it even more.

7 – Having the cops called on me for cutting doughnuts in the church parking lot, in my Gold beetle, all because I wanted to show my friends how powerful my 4 cylinder was. (ps. I drove home before the cops arrived and my friends totally lied and said they didn’t know who drove a gold beetle, They were the best Church friends a guy could ask for.)

8 – going on a moped ride with a group of complete strangers through the backwoods of Thailand to a refuge camp. Why? Because the main guy was our cook at the village we were staying in and I thought he was a good guy.

9 – Jumping off a 50 foot cliff somewhere in Jamaica, Because I couldn’t be called a chicken.

10 – Lingering in the cafeteria in college for an awkwardly long time, because I was hoping Pearl would come to dinner and I would “happen” to still be there.

11 – Having to get our small pick up truck pulled out of a muddy cornfield by a farmer and his tractor because Pearl and I thought we could “make it through”

12 – Sitting on the middle of a frozen lake in a pop up tent, with the world’s largest ice drill, a thermos of coffee, tiny fishing pole, and a frozen butt, because my wife wanted to show me what living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was like.

13 – Almost shooting my parents with a loaded crossbow, because I thought they were burglars and I had to protect my sister from what she thought was “a big hairy man at our door” (she never said if she was referring to mom or dad, I think she’ll take that secret to the grave)

14 – I wrecked (leaving a good bent) on Mom, Dad, and Grandpa’s cars, because I was convinced I really knew how to drive by the time I was 14

15 – I placed a 4 by 3 foot cross made from tree limbs at the end of our country driveway that looked like a bad tombstone, because Hank, the stray dog I befriended a week before, had needed a respectable grave marker.

16 – The refrigerator in the house I grew up in now has a BB size dent because I felt like seeing what my BB gun would do to it.

17 - I once took a friends camera into a public bathroom to “surprise her with pictures of a bruise on my upper inner thigh” when a stranger walked in on me, He didn’t stay around long enough to realize what I was and wasn’t taking a picture of. I was hoping it might be able to help me out.

18 – I once dumped an entire cage full of gerbil poop into our bathtub, which clogged the drain, cause I thought that would be the fastest way to clean the tank.

19 – I once bicycled across town during a Tornado watch and hail, cause I could have sworn those warnings weren’t really going to happen.

20 – I once flipped an entire rack of “clothes” at Victoria secrets cause I thought that was the best place to hide while shopping with my mom and sister.

21 – During a family trip to a local park, I ditched my family to hang out with an African American Church group having a picnic, cause they had better food and I had never talked with a Black man before, but I forgot to tell my parents where I was going, they seemed really excited when they finally found me.

22 – I once rubber banded our sinks water sprayer on, then asked mom for a cup of water…. Only to watch her get sprayed. I laughed really hard, but mom somehow missed that joke.

23 – Speaking of torturing my mom, I once loudly proclaimed in the middle of a department store that the smell we all were noticing was because of her, which wasn’t true, but she was still red in the face, truth be told someone had broken a bottle of “deer pee”

24 – My best friend and I drug down the road a $400 weed eater across town, cause we each thought the other had tied it.

25 – When I dad opened his drug store I told all my friends mom’s I hoped their families got very sick, I just wanted them to see my Dad’s new place.

26 – speaking of Dad and the store, we once were checking in on one our elderly clients to find that she had fallen and was needing assistance, I offered to go get a rope out of the car, tie it to her ceiling fan, and Hoist her up. Dad said that was a creative idea, but maybe not the best, the client didn’t appreciate me referring to her as needing a rope and a “hoisting” to pick up.

27 – I recently played a children’s balloon popping game online until 4 am knowing I had a full days work and graduate classes the next day, cause I was convinced I should be able to bet it.

I’ve had a fun life, have a great life and I’m so thankful for the amazing people who are a part of it.