When you're ten years old, and a car drives by and splashes a puddle of water all over you, it's hard to decide if you should go to school like that or try to go home and change and probably be late. So while he was trying to decide, I drove by and splashed him again.

When I was seven, I told my friend Timmy Barker I would give him a million dollars if he would eat an earthworm. He ate the worm, but I never gave him the million dollars. As of last week, all I had given him was $9,840.

I didn't want to cut down that tree. But I had no choice. It was growing right where I'm going to build my house, if I can ever get enough money together to build it and if I also have enough money to buy the land. That's another thing: I need to find out who owns the land.

As I felt the soft cool mud squish between my toes, I thought, Man, these are not very good shoes!

I remember I was hammering on a fence in the backyard when Dad approached. He was carrying a letter or something in his hand, and he looked worried.
I continued to hammer as he came toward me. "Son," he said, "why are you hammering on that fence? It already has plenty of nails in it."
"Oh, I'm not using nails," I replied. "I'm just hammering." With that, I returned to my hammering.
Dad asked me to stop hammering, as he had some news. I did stop hammering, but first I got a couple more hammers in, and this seemed to make Dad mad. "I said, stop hammering!" he yelled.
I think he felt bad for yelling at me, especially since it looked like he had bad news. "Look," he said, "you can hammer later, but first--"
Well, I didn't even wait to hear the rest. As soon as I heard "You can hammer," that's what I started doing. Hammering away, happy as an old hammer dog.
Dad tried to physically stop me from hammering by inserting a small log of some sort between my hammer and the fence. But I just kept on hammering, 'cause that's the way I am when I get that hammer going. Then, he just grabbed my arm and and made me stop.
"I'm afraid I have some news for you," he said.
I swear, what I did next was not hammering. I was just letting the hammer swing lazily at arm's length, and maybe it tapped the fence once or twice, but that's all. That apparently didn't make any difference whatsoever to Dad, because he just grabbed my hammer out of my hand and flung it across the field.
And when I saw my hammer flying helplessly through the air like that I just couldn't take it. I burst out crying, I admit it. And I ran to the house, as fast as my legs could take me.
"Son, come back!" yelled Dad. "What about your hammer?!"
But I could not have cared less about hammering at that point. I ran into the house and flung myself onto my bed, pounding the bed with my fists. I pounded and pounded, until finally, behind me, I heard a voice. "As long as you're pounding, why not use this?" I turned, and it was Dad, holding a brand-new solid-gold hammer.
I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and ran to Dad's outstretched arms. But suddenly, he jumped out of the way, and I went sailing through the second-story window behind him.
Whenever I hear about a kid getting in trouble with the drugs, I like to tell him this story.

Mom always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, "within reason." When I asked her what she meant by "within reason," she said, "You ask a lot of questions for a garbage man."

The day I met Marta was the happiest day of my life, because that was the day I screwed a friend of mine out of a bunch of money.

As I stood there looking at the beautiful waterfall, I wondered how may other people had stood there, and how many had candy corn "teeth" sticking out between their lips like I did.

I think the most beautiful sunset I ever saw was on page 4 and 5 of The Book of Sunsets.

When I was a kid, the people next door had this little yappy poodle that I used to make fun of all the time. I thought it was real stupid-looking and annoying. But let me tell you, I didn't make fun of it after the time it saved my life. How did it save my life? It's a long story. Too long to tell here. But I can tell you it was full of excitement and danger, and afterwards I never made fun of that poodle again.
Well, I suppose I can at least try to tell the story. I'm still not sure I believe it myself, so many strange and fantastic things happened. Briefly what happened, though, is this: I was walking across a vacant lot near my house when I heard a noise. I turned. You know what? This story is just too hard to try to tell here. Just believe it when I say that the poodle came out of nowhere to attack a cobra.
Where did the cobra come from? Okay, I guess I can at least tell that part. No, I'm going to change my mind again. It's just too hard to explain--although if I did explain it, you would be glued to the edge of your seat.
Maybe someday I'll tell the story of the poodle and the cobra. No, I won't. It's a good one though.

The first cigarette I ever had I smoked behind Grandpa's barn. It made me dizzy, and I coughed a lot. "Don't worry, that always happens with the first one," said Grandpa. "Try another one." And you know, he was right.

Every year at Christmastime a whole set of emotions sweeps over me--emotions which probably go back to my childhood.
The first emotion is wondering if I'm going to get any presents. Then it changes to "Hooray, I got some presents!" Then it changes to "Is that all the presents I got?"

I remember when we were kids, one of our favorite games was to play "pirate." We'd dress up like pirates. Then we'd go find an adult walking down the street and we'd go up to him and pull out our butcher knives, which we called our "swords," and say, "We're pirates! Give us your money!" A lot of adults would pretend to be scared and give us their money. Others would suddenly run away, yelling for help. We played pirate until we were twenty or so.

If I could go back and change one thing in my life, I think it would be that time I found that one-dollar bill on the sidewalk. I would change it to a million-dollar bill.

Mom used to warn me that I could lose an eye playing with BB guns. But she never warned me that I could also lose my BB gun, which I did.

What started out to be a nice pleasant drive in the country turned into the "Afternoon from Hell."
First of all, when Marta and I were leaving, the cats looked at us like, "Where are you going?"
Then, when we were driving, we had to stop and get gas. So right there that's time taken away from looking at the scenery.
Then, when we get home, guess what the cats are doing? Sleeping! Man, what next?

We asked Dad if we could have a trampoline, but he said no, that they were too dangerous and too expensive. But then we went and talked to the trampoline salesman at the store, and he said they weren't too expensive or dangerous. I think I'm still sorta mad at Dad for lying to us like that.

Sunday was always Pancake Day in our family, because that was the day we'd all drive up to Pancake Mountain, and then maybe on the way home stop and get some pizza.
We'd always sing the same song, too, on the way home. It went like this:

There's nothing flatter
Than a pizza
Nothing you can make.
The only thing that might
Be flatter
Is a fish they call the hake!

I'll never forget the time my friend Stew went skydiving. Boy, what a mistake that was! First of all, his parachute didn't open. Second, we didn't have the right address, so before we got there we got lost and went driving all around for almost an hour. And third, when we finally did get there, Stew tried to back out and we had to talk him into going.

I'll never forget the time I got caught stealing watermelons from old Mr. Barnslow's watermelon patch. I was with my friend Bobby. We were giggling so hard I thought I'd wet my pants!
At first we tried to steal two watermelons each, but they were too heavy and we dropped them, and that made us laugh even harder.
Finally, we each picked out a good one, and we were just about to sneak back through the fence when we heard a low, deep voice behind us. "Just where do you two think you're going with those watermelons?" I gulped and turned around. It was old Mr. Barnslow, pointing his shotgun at us.
Bobby dropped his watermelon, then pulled out the .38 revolver he kept in his waist, turned, and fired. But the turning must have thrown off his aim, because the shot only hit Mr. Barnslow in the thigh. Mr. Barnslow immediately fired both barrels at Bobby. One blast of buckshot missed entirely, but the other tore into Bobby's shoulder. He tried to fire back, but his shoulder was so torn up he couldn't raise his arm. Just as he was trying to switch to his left hand, Mr. Barnslow ran up and cracked him across the face with the butt of his shotgun. Bobby fell to the ground in a heap. Mr. Barnslow raised the butt of his gun to finish him off, but just then Bobby pulled out his hunting knife and plunged it into the farmer's big white belly.
After that, I don't think I stole watermelons for at least a year.

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