In the days of old, and while looking for cigarettes in my father's bedroom cabinet at about age twelve, I happened to find a canister of mace he had there. I was certainly a hapless chap back then, and inadvertently, I set the thing off and choked profusely. My eyes burned, not to mention my nose and throat. Perhaps this was God's way of telling me to stay away from cigarettes, not to mention dad's cabinet. You'd think I would have learned my lesson. As the old saying goes, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Did my mother know? She does now. Oh, those exploratory pubescent years!

Another adventure I engaged in was investigating the tectonics in the fairly small town where we lived. It was during those excursions that I discovered numerous ponds and lakes and the pollywogs, fish, and the turtles they contained. I always did well in science and gym classes but still had absolutely no interest in books or writing, unlike my valedictorian brother. And so now, after some forty years later, I'm telling this story for your enjoyment and mine.

As I grew older and began junior high school, I met a very close friend to whom I gave the name "Paper Route Turtle Buddy." We met by chance one day at an intersecting point on our paper routes and of course became pretty close friends. Every day after that, when we saw each other approaching from a distance, we would yell out, "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" Every day we met up at the same place near a green, duckweed-covered lake, and we there planned to someday commandeer this old rowboat that was just always sitting there. When the day finally arrived, we got in the boat and rowed out a bit, and to our surprise, water started seeping in from a hole in the bottom. No wonder it had been sitting there unoccupied for so long. Wow! What to do? We hurried back to the shore and got back just in time before the boat started to sink into the muck. Somebody from a nearby house started yelling at us, and I tell you, you never saw two young boys pedal as fast when we both jumped on our bicycles and headed for the hills.