It’s been a few weeks since I’ve taken the time to embarass myself in front of you. (I should work on being more motivated.)

Thought you might like to hear about the time I burned down an entire barn. (I mentioned it so long ago. I was hoping you’d forget, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t.)

(I’d like to.)

I was a senior in high school. So, somewhere in between getting my senior pictures taken, filling out scholarship applications, and having a really bad case of “senioritis”…I also burned down the barn on our family farm.

Lest you think I was a 17 year old playing with matches, I need to let you know that because we lived in the country, we were allowed to burn our own trash. Quite opposite of enjoying matches, I was always afraid of the little sticks. My mom never could get me to light a candle for her in the house and I certainly never wanted to burn the trash.

But finally one Saturday, she took me out to the trash barrel with her and showed me (again) how to light a match and catch the trash on fire. I guess she figured it was one of those skills I really should learn before leaving home in a few months. So like all good daughters, I watched carefully and learned how to light a piece of a garbage on fire.

Fastforward to the following Saturday. We were cleaning house like we always did on Saturdays, but Mom started to not feel well so she went to go lay down.

I decided to keep cleaning and surprise her with a clean house when she got up. And then I decided that I really wanted to surprise her with what a brave girl I was by burning the trash all by myself. (Sounds like I was five, but really, really the burning the trash thing really freaked me out.)

So out I went with the bags of trash and the matches, working up my courage all the way to the barrel. I got the match going on the second try, which I felt so good about. The trash was now burning and Mom would be so proud.

Perhaps I should stop here and tell you that I was so concerned about the fact that I would be suprising Mom with a clean house and by the fact that I had actually burned the trash myself that I didn’t consider the fact that the wind was blowing pretty hard. Oops.

I don’t know why I chose to look outside later – probably to look out proudly at my burning trash. But look outside I did. I noticed that some of the trash had blown out of the barrel way over to the grass in front of the barn. I thought, “Hmm. That can’t be good.”

So I went out there to stamp out the “bit of fire” I had seen from the window.

(Okay…I’m starting to have stress at this point of telling the story. It’s okay, Laura. Just relax. It was years and years ago, and no one got hurt. It’s okay.)

I went out to stamp out the fire – but really – it wasn’t very stamp out-able. There were quite a few pieces of trash and the grass in front of the barn was tall and dry – and it was pretty windy. (How did I not notice the wind before?)

I decided that I’d better go wake up Mom. (This was not quite the way I had planned to surprise her.)

She was realllly groggy, so she was quite disoriented when I was trying to tell her about the trash burning by the barn. But she went out there with me and we dragged our little garden hose over to the burning patches of burning grass. The hose produced a little trickle that barely even got our hands wet. (I’m PRETTY sure we looked ridiculous holding that dinky hose with a tiny bit of water dripping out!! We laughed about that later. Much later.)

Then we noticed that the fire was spreading to inside the barn. I was kind of feeling somewhere in the middle of being freaked out and being in denial that the barn was now on fire. I mean – THIS could not be happening!

We went in and called the “fire department” which in Tiny Town USA, meant a bunch of volunteer farmers. When the first guys got there, they saw that the fire was now bigger than they could handle so they started calling all the other fire departments in all the surrounding communities.

They sent Mom and me back into the house while they worked. At this point, they decided that there was nothing they could do to save the barn so they just started to spray down all of the other buildings on our farm so that the heat from the flames wouldn’t catch them on fire too. I was in the house crying and watching the huge barn I had played in all my life be engulfed in flames. The fire was now HUGE…because that was one huge barn. And, while we actually didn’t use the barn much anymore – it was full of old, dry hay. Lots of old, dry hay. The fire was huge.

My dad, in the meantime, had been on a tractor a few miles away. He saw the smoke growing larger and larger in the direction of our house. He finally got nervous enough to get into his pick-up and come on home. The closer he got, the more afraid he got because the fire really looked like it was coming from our place. He knew Mom and I were home, and he was afraid that it was our house on fire.

So while I was freaking out and crying and panicking about what my Daddy would say when he saw that I had burned down our barn, he was just so thankful when he pulled into the yard that it was just the barn and that we were safe.

Well, I guess there’s nothing much more to tell. The barn and all the hay smoldered for about two weeks, which was a really fun and long reminder of what had happened. I called my brother, who was away at college, to tell him what had happened. The way I was crying and carrying on trying to tell him the story, he was worried that someone had died or something – so when I finally got it out that the barn had burned down – he was also relieved that it was just the barn.

And then it just gave him one more thing to tease me about… :)

So there you go.

What I’d like to know is – have YOU done anything like that will top that one? Please tell me I’m not the only one with outrageous memories and stories to tell.

Whew…I’m exhausted. ;)

Way back in our college days…

You know…way back in the 1990’s?

Back in the day when girls had big hair… 

Back in the day when were singing the Bryan Adam’s song:  “Everything I Do…I Do it For You…”

Back in the day when we wore shoulder pads (or was that the 80’s?)…

Okay, I could keep thinking of these really cool things we used to do…

Or I could just get to the point.

Matt and I met at York College and began dating our sophmore year. 

After a few months, our relationship began to get serious. So serious in fact, that I began to type his research papers for him.

(You know it’s true love when you start sharing a typewriter.)

This worked out just fine, because I was the kind of student who really couldn’t sleep well at night until her research papers were typed, placed carefully in a plastic cover, and turned in to the professor…three weeks early.

And Matt was the kind of student who, waited until the last minute…um…worked better under pressure.

So, our relationship grew…and so did the number of research papers I typed for him. 

Ah, the memories. 

Me (with my big hair) sitting in the dorm parlor at a table with my typewriter,  Matt standing behind me with two or three books open…dictating his paper as I typed. It was a pretty good system. We got to spend (quality) time together…I was a fast typer…he liked to “talk” out his papers. It worked.

So one research paper leads to another, and we ended up getting married just after our junior year of college.

For a wedding gift, Matt’s family all pitched in and surprised us with a computer. Wow! What a nice surprise! 

Thus we said goodbye to our dating days with the typewriter…and entered our new lives as husband and wife with a computer.

Now, we would sit in our little apartment…me (with my big hair) in front of the computer…Matt standing behind me with his books open…dictating his papers as I typed.

Ah, it was the picture of married bliss.

Until one day.

I’m not sure what the deal was with this particular research paper…but um, well…it was due in about five hours…and we were just sitting down to start typing it. (It must have been soccer season…which took up a lot of Matt’s time…and prevented him from getting his papers done three weeks ahead of time.)

So, we were a couple of pages into the writing of the paper. Matt started looking through one of his books to clarify the facts in his head before he started dictating some more.

And I decided to take advantage of the pause in typing to close my eyes and stretch.

Bad idea.

I straightened my back and kicked my feet forward to stretch my legs…

And I opened my eyes to a blank screen.

Yep, I had kicked the cord and unplugged the computer.

Matt looked up and saw what had happened…looked shocked and dismayed for about two seconds…then smiled and said…”Ah, man. It’s my fault. I should have been saving it more often…and I should have started earlier in the first place…”

Of course I was sitting there sobbing at the computer (like all the good wives do when they have just helped their husband get a bad grade)…

So I hiccupped and apologized and asked him what he was going to do now…

And he just calmly picked up the phone and called the professor and told him that his research paper had just accidentally been erased. Not, “My wife just chucked my paper”…just , “it got erased.” He didn’t even slander my good name.

Did I pick the right guy to marry or what? (Especially if I was going to do this kind of thing very often…)

Oh, and the professor was kind enough to give him a deadline extension…and we started over…and the paper was better than it would have been in the first place…and I think he got a B on it.

The end.

I did continue to type his research papers..so he didn’t really fire me that day. But you better believe that we clicked that save button obsessively from then on. 

We still do.

Now what should I tell next…about burning the barn..or shoplifting? Or any of the others on the list?

Alright…you talked me into it. I’ll tell you about what I did on the York College choir tour bus…but only because I can hide behind my computer.

(You should all know that my heart is beating rapidly right now as if I’m having a panic attack. I HOPE you enjoy this and appreciate the courage it is taking to tell this story…)

<deep breath>

Okay…so it’s my sophmore year in college, and we are on our Christmas break choir tour, in which we travelled for about ten days on an old (and loud) bus…stopping every night to sing for different churches around the country.

There are around 50 to 60 college kids on the bus…and I’m sitting with my friend Mary pretty close to the middle of the bus. We are just sitting there yacking and playing cards and doing whatever to pass the time.

(Did I mention that the bus was loud? It was loud…I mean the bus itself…plus all the 50-60 voices on the bus…)

About six rows behind me sits this really ornery guy named Donny. And instead of playing cards to pass his time, Donny decides to be the funny guy…

So Donny calls out to no one in particular… “Hey, what’s the name of that one restaraunt? The one with the great burgers? Rudd…what?”

(Notice that he switched the letters around in the word…just setting someone up…)

(Because if you don’t say it right…Fuddruckers…it comes out  Rudd—–)

(See why it was so hard for me to tell you this?!?) 

Okay, so I heard him asking…and SO didn’t get that he was joking. I was just trying to be nice and help out the poor guy who was simply trying to think of the name of a burger joint.

So, I stand up at my seat, turn around and holler, “F—–s!!”

Now, keep in mind too…no one else really heard Donny ask the question in the first place. All they knew was that seemingly out of NOWHERE…sweet little Laura stands up on the bus and drops the F bomb. Out of nowhere.

Right as it’s coming out of my mouth…of course I realize what I’m doing!!! But it was too late to do anything about it then, wasn’t it?

And so I flop back down in my seat and put my head down in my lap…trying to decide whether to laugh…cry…or throw up…

The whole bus…of course…is getting over their shock…and dying with laughter…for like the next 50 miles of road time…

And I’m sitting there trying to remember how to breathe correctly (kinda like I’m doing now). 

And Donny (bless his stinkin’ little heart) appologizes to me a hundred times…cause he was just being silly…and didn’t think ANYONE would fall for it…

I’ve never lived it down…and probably never will…

And now you know too.

Okay, I’m going to go do some breathing exercises in an attempt to calm myself down after just sharing with you the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. 

You go ahead and laugh…

(Shucks…I’ll admit…it IS really funny.)

I’m not sure my burning down the barn story or my shoplifting story will top this one…but I do hope that after learning this dark secret you’ll still come back for more…

:)