Last up for this week of guest posters is my brother, Erik. You’ll remember I featured him in a couple of Thursday Thirteens (one about him and his response about me). He doesn’t have a blog, but he’s mentioned possibly starting one for his photography. He is the Chief Preparator & Programs Assistant at an art gallery in California.
He’s pretty cool…but I think this post just proves WHY mom liked me best. And I’m sure the fact that this all happened around my first year of life is purely coincidental. I hope.
His take on: Since hindsight is 20/20, what is the best “mistake” you’ve ever made?
Hmmm… I have to go way back to my youth for this one. (There has been nothing good in the long run about my adult mistakes.)
When I was a kid I had a morning paper route. I’d pry myself out of bed at 4am or so and pick up the bundle of newsprint that was dropped in front of my house by “Gilbert”, my route manager. I never discovered whether that was his first or last name. He just called himself “Gilbert”, no “Mr.”, no nuthin’. Concurrent with my new career in journalism- the paper was the Columbus Citizen-Journal- I was dipping my toe into film making as well with my brother and my best friend and his brother. We were particularly enthralled with space adventure and model building. We’d make big space cruisers out of that modular styrofoam packing material from appliances we’d scavenge out of the dumpsters on my paper route. We’d add elements we’d make out of balsa wood and plastic parts from model kits and fiber optics, etc.
Now, in order to make a proper space epic there had to be explosions. Big explosions. And this is where I set upon the best series of mistakes. Over a period of about a year, I’d say between sixth and seventh grade I, with my brothers-in-arms set upon a path of creative destruction.
Regular firecrackers and cherry bombs and bottle rockets just didn’t cut it in the special effects department. So somehow we got a recipe for a homemade firework from another set of brothers. These things were very simple to make and basically harmless but they produced a hail of burning match heads and a huge BANG. Plus they looked great on film.
I suppose it was a mistake to be blowing things up in the dead of night in our own neighborhood. But it’s clear to me now that expanding those activities into blowing up peoples’ planters and trash cans and setting them off on the doorsteps of innocent folks’ homes while they were fast asleep was downright mean. And criminal. We even got chased by a helicopter once. Which is why the FBI got involved.
To make a long story short, our principal provided the Feds with our names, and everybody got hauled off. Everybody but me. Somehow my name was left off the list and I stayed home while my brother and the four others and their parents made a trip downtown. I imagined them being thrown in a dark room with a big two-way mirror and a light shining in their faces.
We all got our story straight before the trip. Everybody lied. It wasn’t us. No consequences. I don’t even recall if anybody got punished.
The mistakes are clear, but man-o-man those were some of the best times. In hindsight I feel horrible about the part of it that went beyond making movies, but the sense of freedom and feeling like we were doing something outrageous and creative and thrilling was beyond description.
Filed under: Guest Posts
