Lighter fare

There have been a lot of blood-pressure elevating posts of late.

Time for some lighter fare…

First up, a new drill for all of you training junkies…

The “Sweep the leg drill”. Hat tip to Gun Nuts Media.

Next, a story about a boy in church.

by PNWRN

The summer I was 11, I decided that I didn’t want to go to church any more. I had much more interesting things I could be doing, in my carefully considered opinion.

Unfortunately, my carefully considered opinion didn’t mean a thing to Mom. I was going to church, and that was that.

I needed a plan. Whining to get my way was out, Mom had a short way with whiners. You’d barely get started with your whine before she had a grip on your ear and was reaching for the willow switch…no, I needed something, some way to convince her that taking me to church just wasn’t worth the bother. Or embarrassment…hmm, maybe a possibility there. Then The Plan sprang into my twisted little mind…

The next Saturday I rushed through my chores as fast as I could because I needed to ride my bike to town to pick up the vital ingredient to my plan, a 24 oz. can of pork n’ beans. After I bought it, I went outside and thought about it for a minute,then went back inside and bought a nice big white onion. Just in case the beans needed some help, you know.

Saturday at dinner I kinda picked at my food a little, trying to act like I wasn’t feeling very good. Mom immediately knew something was up, but she thought I was trying to get out of going to church…really I just needed the room to eat that entire can of beans later. Which I did, about an hour after dinner, with the whole onion chopped up raw into the beans and gobbled down with my trusty Scout knife with the fork and spoon on it. Was kinda hard to get to sleep that night, but I eventually did…

…and woke up in the morning with second thoughts, realizing that I was gonna have to take some punishment for what I planned, but then a preliminary rumble from below let me know that it was too late to back out now, and that I might as well go for broke.

When we filed in and sat down on the pews, I made sure to sit as far from my mother as I could get, with my two younger sisters between us. By good fortune, a large elderly gent was on my other side, normally an object of the deepest horror but now perfect for my plan. We had barely gotten seated when the first little squeaker escaped, no one heard me but they all noticed the rich sulfurous aroma…I noticed some accusatory glances going around but none directed at me, perfect.

Fifteen minutes into the service, the old guy next to me is asleep already…I cut a short sharp one, with a nice resonating BLAT against the hardwood pews. I immediately looked sharply over to the gent next to me, and so did everyone else…he was oblivious. His wife gave him an ineffective elbow, then subsided. The smell was noticeable, but my digestive system was still young and healthy and would not develop its full capacity for odoriferous nastiness for some years yet

Waited a few more minutes for the pressure to build, then let off a longer blast from the trumpet. with a rising note at the end. Again pulled the indignant act at the guy next to me, and most people fall for it, but I feel Mom eye-lasers tracking across the left side of my face now, and I don’t dare look at her. Some titters go around, but quickly die out.

Wait another ten minutes or so, (is this boring sermon EVER going to end?) and let out a silent but deadly one, and like always with a SBD, it was rank… this time, one of my sisters caught on and gave me this wide-eyed WTF look, I gave her an evil little smile. She just about exploded from trying to restrain her giggles. Mom is really suspicious now, but I’m not in arms reach so I’m safe for the moment.

The sermon is winding down, the moment I’ve been waiting for approaches, the pressure is building fast…

The minister says bows his head and says “Let us pray”.

“Dear Lord – “…BLATT…BLAAATTT…BLATBLATBLAT…BBBLLLAAAAT!

By now, the whole congregation is red faced and struggling to keep from laughing, at least the men were…I dunno what the women thought, that’s a skill I’ve never managed to acquire. My mother has a death grip on the back of my neck, but that’s not the end she should have holding, because I wasn’t out of ammo yet…

The minister glares around sternly, then begins again…”Dear Lord”…and I let it all go in one mighty blast…BBBBLLLLAAAAATTTT!…shocked dead silence for three seconds and then a final FFWWEEEBLAT! broke the spell and absolute chaos ensued, the men all roaring helplessly with laughter and the women…well, I think they wanted me dead, judging by the glares and turned backs and the cackles of indignant little old ladies. The minister has given up, his arms folded across his chest as he glared at me.

My Mom by now is incandescent with rage and humiliation, shifts her grip to my left ear and starts dragging me outside, muttering incomplete and incoherent threats all the while…and by dragging, I’m not exaggerating. I doubt my feet touched the floor more than three times before I was outside…Mom was winding up to really blast me good when I asked her “what about K and M (my sisters)…Mom looks around wildly…she was so furious she forgot all about them. She rushed back into the church, gathered up my still helplessly giggling sisters, and was followed out the door by the minister, who told her something…I never found out exactly what, but the effect was all I desired, I never had to set foot in there again.

Mom never said a word on the way back to the farm, I knew better, and my sisters…well, they were primed to explode into giggles at the least provocation. They managed to hold out until they got out of the car, then they were off…they later told me they both wet themselves laughing.

As for the after-effects…Mom wore out both arms working me over with the willow switch, which was bad but I’d been through it before. Then she grounded me, when I asked her how long, she said “I’ll let you know”…I became the hero of all the boys at school, but strangely enough I only got dates with girls who were new to town.

On my 50th birthday my Mom called and the first thing she said was “you’re still grounded”…sigh.

Later on another story, all this typing makes my arthritis get all enthusiastic and happy to reacquaint itself with me.