1) In 8th grade I did a 50 mile backpacking trip for my backpacking merit badge. On the trip I was covered (as was everyone else) with seed ticks.

True. It was a 50-mile, 5-day backpacking trip through "Land Between the Lakes" in western Kentucky on Labor Day weekend, 1996. On day 2 we were trying to make it to (or near) our half way mark so that we could be a little more relaxed coming back. To do this, we were trying to cover a long distance so we decided not to stop for a break in the morning and picked out a spot on the map to stop for lunch; a cove where we could eat on the bank of Kentucky Lake. The problem was either the map was wrong or out of date, and the trail did not go down to this cove. There was a gravel road, but it was fenced off! With a morning of nonstop hiking behind us, we looked for the next place on the map where we could stop. This was a marked shelter, not too far away. So we probably walked another hour only to discover that this "shelter" was nothing more than half a corrugated pipe stuck in the ground at the edge of an open field, with weeds overgrown all around it.

Everyone was exhausted, so we went ahead and stopped there. Later that afternoon when we came to our campground we began to notice that we were all covered with tiny little ticks (seed ticks) from stopping at that shelter! One of the boys was bitten so badly that one of the leaders had to walk back with him to the road, catch a ride back to the cars, and have his parents come and pick him up. The rest of us got off as many as we could just brushing them off and swimming in the lake, but it wasn't until I got home that Monday that I was able to get all of them.

2) In 7th grade one of my classmates threatened to "burn my house down" because I accidentally knocked the wind out of him with a basketball.

True. I threw a pass to him in practice and it hit him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He stewed about it and made some sort of remark to the effect "don't be surprised if you come home one day and your house is burned down." Eyes For a while after that though we would get calls in the evening with nobody on the other end. My dad started asking "*****, is that you?" They stopped after a while, maybe when he left the school (I can't remember), but it was a big joke between my father and I for years.

3) The first time I drove a car was when my father and I went sledding. My father slipped on the ice, hurt his wrist, and needed me to drive home. I was just 14 at the time. We later found out that he had broken it.

False, but it is sort of true. My father and I did go sledding, I think I was around 14, he did break his wrist and did ask me to drive home. However, I refused! I'm about as big of a goody-goody as you'll find, and was even more so when I was younger. I didn't care if it was my father asking, or that he had broken his wrist, I was too young to drive. Period. End of discussion! He wasn't too pleased about that, having to drive home one handed with a broken wrist. Emot_no

-Eric