Get ready to laugh at these embarrassing stories.

Sam and the Stump – My whole family was at my grandparent’s house one day. It was nice so we were outside most of the day. Our favorite games to play were wiffle ball and croquet. My grandparents had a lot of trees in the yard and one was recently cut down. Not gone…just cut down. The ladies were sitting in the shade talking and the guys were throwing the football around. Every once in a while someone would yell, “Watch out for the stump!” My Granny was a nervous wreck about the stump and the football throwing. And rightfully so, someone threw Sam the football and he forgot all about it. BAM! He ran into the stump and fell over. He was ok, so we all laughed. Then someone yelled, “How did you miss the tree in the middle of the yard?” You see…the stump wasn’t just a stump. My Papa didn’t have time to get the tree all the way down before the family got to his house. The stump was waist high on Sam. Did I mention that he’s six foot one. That’s one hard stump to miss. 

Kelly and the Sign – Do you remember Opryland? It was theme park in Nashville, Tn. Before I tell you what happened, you need to know a little about my daddy. He is the fastest man I know. By fast I mean, he is out of the car before he even has the car in park. If you ever go anywhere with my daddy, don’t be slow or you’ll get left behind. Ok, now you will understand why I was in such a hurry. I was invited by a friend to Opryland. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to get there. I love riding rides. We had just arrived in the parking lot and like always, I jumped out of the van and started walking as fast as I could to get to the park. I soon realized that I was alone. I looked back for my friend and she was still at the van with her family. Apparently they park their car before they get out. Ha! I kept looking at them yelling for them to hurry up as I kept moving forward. They were also yelling something back at me but I was too far away to hear. By the time I heard, “Kelly…STOP!” It was too late. Right as I turned around….SMACK! I ran straight into a handicap parking sign. Right into the metal part, but only one part of my face. I got a really bad black eye. Yes…I got made fun of for the rest of the day and a few days after that. I still rode all the rides. 

Matt and the Church – We rode bikes a lot. We rode around the block of our house, to the store to get candy, even to our friends house to play. We were fortunate to live in a town where we could ride our bikes and be gone all day. As long as we were home by dark, we could go anywhere. We also had a church with a huge parking lot across the street from our house. That parking lot was our playground. We played chase, hide and seek, and other made up games. Matt had just gotten a new bike with gears. He wasn’t sure how to change his gear so he rode around all day learning the gears on the bike. He had to stop a few times because he’d make the chain fall off but eventually he got it. He was so proud of himself. He had gained enough courage to ride his bike and look down to see his gears change. I guess he too forgot that there was a huge brick church in the parking lot. A tire doesn’t make much noise when it hits brick, but a little boy sure can let out a scream when his head hits the brick. When his tire hit the church it slug him over his handlebars and he scraped his forehead on the brick. Sam yelled, “How do you miss a huge brick church, it doesn’t move?” Sam laughed, Matt cried and I got mad at Sam for laughing at Matt. 

Side note: Sam ran into the stump about a week after he laughed at Matt for running into the church. Karma! Maybe, who knows! 

Daddy and the Skateboard – I’d love to tell you the story about my Daddy and the skateboard but I can’t just yet. Remember, I told you in an Instagram story that I might be on a podcast soon. Well….I am happy to announce that I will be on a podcast called Thoughtful Moments. It will be released on September 26th. If you want to hear about Daddy and the skateboard…tune in September 26th.

I love my family. We have made some great memories together and I’m thankful that we are just as close or closer today. 

I have two brothers. Sam is the oldest and Matt is the youngest. That leaves me as the middle child. The favorite! I’m kidding, Daddy didn’t have favorites, or at least he didn’t show it. And some people think since I was the only girl, I was spoiled rotten. Ha-ha! We were all spoiled. We always had more than we needed. But I was more on the rotten side of things. I was the one that got us in more trouble than my brothers. Growing up with brothers wasn’t so bad though. We had a lot of fun and mostly they loved playing jokes on me. I was easy to scare and they always knew they could make me mad in the end. And for some reason, they thought that was funny. So here is one time a prank wasn’t so funny in the end. 

We lived in an older two-story home. Our house was white with black shutters. A big front porch with a swing. The floors and stairs were hardwood. My brothers and I had rooms on the second floor and the rest of the house was on the first floor. Just a little background on our house. It’s important to know about our stairs. 

It was a warm sunny afternoon. Who am I kidding. I don’t remember what the day was like. It was many moons ago, but I do remember this story like it was yesterday. I was home alone with Matt and that meant I was responsible for him. I was around eleven years old. He is four years younger, and for those of you that aren’t good at math; that would have made him seven. I was downstairs in the kitchen getting something to eat. I wasn’t exactly sure if Matt was ok, I was only sure that he was upstairs. All of a sudden, I hear, clank…clank…clank…bang…bang…splat! I have heard these noises many times before. Remember me telling you that we had hardwood stairs. We would slide, roll toys, balls and throw stuff down the stairs all the time. I didn’t think anything until I heard, “Owwwww, my leg, ahhhhhh!” Matt was screaming! I panicked, I just realized that Matt fell down the stairs. I took off running through the kitchen, to living room, around the corner and saw him lying there at the bottom of the stairs holding his leg! I knew I was in big trouble now. I just let my brother fall down the stairs and break his leg. I get down on the floor and start asking what’s wrong, as he is still screaming that his leg hurts. I ask him to let me see! I am panicked! I am so upset that he’s hurt! He finally rolls over and starts laughing. Then he says, “I was just kidding, I threw toys down the stairs to make you think I fell down them.” “Are you kidding me!” I asked him. He only starts laughing harder. I got on top of him and starting hitting him so hard and yelled, “That’s not funny, don’t you ever do that to me again!” I was so mad. I almost started crying. He finally realized that his joke wasn’t a joke after all. 

I am not sure if beating him up made him realize what he did wasn’t a joke or me crying, but he never played another joke like that on me. 

Thanks Matt! I’m glad I can finally laugh at your joke.  

At hour house we were super busy. We being me and my two brothers. I have an older (Sam) and younger (Matt). That leaves me as the dreaded middle child. Ha! Daddy worked forty plus hours a week, and we were very active kids. We weren’t home much, and when we were, we some times had chores. And chores had to be done before we could play.

Early one Saturday morning, my daddy woke us up because we are normally late sleepers. Or at least Sam and I were. Matt was still pretty young, and he tended to be an early riser. I’d wake up some mornings and find him eating carrots and ranch dressing for breakfast. Who does that? Again, back to this early day, Sam and I had to mow the yard, while Matt munched on his snack enjoying the air conditioner. So Sam and I headed outside to mow the yard. We noticed the grass was still a bit damp and I just knew this was going to be exactly what I needed to get out of mowing the yard. WRONG! When I expressed to Daddy that the yard was still wet, he said that I could wait to mow, but I couldn’t go to the pool till the yard was mowed. Crap! So I marched myself right back outside and started the ole push mower.

I had to mow the front and part of the side yard. Sam had to mow the back yard and the bank of our creek that ran along the side of the house. I’m mowing, living in my own world, and probably sulking that I am having to do this. Suddenly I hear Sam yelling, “Kelly, go get Daddy!” I see him hobbling to the porch and I think he must have just twisted his ankle. He is fine. He is walking, so he can’t be hurt that bad. WRONG! When he stepped onto the porch, the top of his shoe was flopping up and down. All I could see was blood. I ran inside and yelled, “Daddy! Sam is hurt! He’s bleeding!” I never saw Daddy move so fast in my life. He ran straight out the house and slung the screen door open so hard it hit the side of the house. You see, what happened, was, Sam was mowing the bank of the creek. He slipped and when he did, his foot went under the mower.

I was in shock but I wanted to see what Sam did to his foot. I walked outside and needless to say it was gross! I saw a bloody sock with a big hole in it. When I looked closer, I could see his big toe, no toe, then another toe. I started screaming, “He’s missing a toe! He cut his toe off!” I screamed this a hundred times. I started crying, hyperventilating, and flailing my arms like a bird. I looked like a crazy person. By the way I was acting, you would have thought Sam cut his leg off. Thank goodness Dottie (Daddy’s girlfriend, now wife) was there. She came outside, and had to teach me how to breath again. I remember telling her that he cut off one of his toes, but she insisted I was wrong and Sam would be fine.

In the midst of all the craziness, Daddy took Sam to the hospital. He ran every stop sign and light on his way there. He even had a cop trying to pull him over. Daddy wasn’t stopping for anything. He had the air blowing full blast, talking to Sam, and trying to keep him from passing out. He made it to the emergency room and when the cop pulled in behind, the cop told him that next time he needed to call 911.

Matt and I are home with Dottie and she gets a call from Daddy. He asked her to go find Sam’s toe. Gross! I can’t even imagine having to do that. I’d probably throw up. She calls my uncle and ask him to come over to help her. They find it and take it to the hospital to see if they can reattach it. The toe couldn’t be saved, so Sam lost the toe beside his big toe and a little bit of his big toe.

Matt and I were staying with our cousin at her house but we did get to go see Sam later that night. He already had friends coming to visit. Two particular, Drew and John. They were his best friends. We were all talking to him, and then his friends started singing, “This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy got cut off!” OK! That is so funny, but at the time, it made me so mad. Who knows why! I guess I just felt bad for my brother and they were just making fun of him. Of course Sam didn’t care, he was laughing about it.

So that’s the story! 9 toes or eight in a half. You decide.

Leave a comment, if you remember a funny childhood memory!