Yo-yo

Up and down
Up and down we go-go
Spinning round
On the ground we roll-o 
He wondered what it's like to be a toy-o
Smacked his head and ruined all the joy-o
I'm in trouble
So much trouble
Uh-oh 
I suppose it should be a big no-no
To use my little brother as a yo-yo

-B.C. Byron

I’m actually the little brother in my family. This poem presents a good opportunity to list some of my worst ideas from childhood. I’ll share my bad ideas with the hopes that you will avoid them, or at least execute them with an adult’s permission, better planning, and safety equipment. My older brother and I came up with many of these ideas, but my cousins seemed to really get our brains turning in the wrong direction. Oh, the fun and injuries we shared together. Glad that my brother and I survived those days and that we still have all of our fingers and toes.

• A home made zipline with a rusty pulley and some very old rope
• A home made bow that shot flaming arrows covered in burlap dipped in gasoline
• Jumping from a 2 story high haystack with a thin padding of straw to break my fall
• Peeing on an electric fence
• Riding on top of a car at 40 miles per hour on a bumpy dirt road
• Keeping a pet rattlesnake in a lunchbox for 2 weeks
• Rolling my sister down a hill while tucked inside a metal barrel
• Mixing chemicals that we found in the old barn
• Making weapons out of nearly every item we could salvage (Wolverine claws made from old plow parts, spears from pointy sticks, surgical tubing slingshots, clubs with rusty nails poking out, and anything long and straight was a sword)
• Modifying and combining store-bought fireworks to make them louder
• Throwing fireworks at each other
• Making “stew” out of earthworms, mud, grass, and other gross finds then convincing my sister to drink some for a dollar
• Keeping a captured frog in a tank in our room and losing 2 days of sleep because it croaked all night
• Adding a “friend” into the frog’s tank. Turns out that garter snakes and frogs don’t really get along.
• Boxing without boxing gloves, helmets, or rules
• Eating loads of beans and then lighting our nether gasses on fire (pants are also quite flammable it seems)
• Snorting pixy sticks and ground pepper into our nostrils

Again, DO NOT try any of these. The yo-yo thing is also a bad idea, but I’m curious about how it could actually be done. Hmmm….