Flashback Friday #52 (part 3)

Welcome back everyone to the third (and final) post of Flashback Friday #52 Weekend Party Anniversary Edition. The two stories that I will be telling today are a lot alike, but their similarities are different. One story amazed me, the other amazed my Dad.

The story that amazed me:
As long as I have known my Dad, he hasn't been very athletic. I don't recall ever seeing him play softball at the family reunions or riding a bike or shooting hoops with the guys. That's because he was into extreme sports when he was a teenager.

He told me that he used to love to roller skate as a teen. The school would have a skating party, and it would open the gym for the kids to skate on the hardwood gym floor. This was before polyurethane wheels. The skate wheels were wooden, so the wouldn't scratch the gym floor. Dad says that the waxed school corridor made for a better skating surface than the gym floor. Dad and his friends would regularly slip past the teacher chaperone's and race through the school.

But I digress. I did say that he was into extreme sports, and roller skating doesn't fit the bill. Or does it? He also told me that it was a common pastime to see how many barrels you could jump while on skates. He didn't say if this was in the gym, or on a sidewalk, but nevertheless, if you crash, it's going to hurt. You would take a running start, skate to maximum speed, and leap (hopefully clearing all barrels). You also had to land upright, or it didn't count. He said that his personal best was jumping over six barrels. The though of him jumping barrels on skates still boggles my mind. Perhaps it was from injuries during this time of his life as to why he didn't do a lot athletically. He probably messed him self up good a time or two.

The story that amazed him.
I've mentioned that Dad had to do farming chores when he was growing up. One of his chores was plowing the field with the tractor. Since he was the only boy,it was expected of him to learn how to do this.

One day while he was plowing he saw a storm brewing in the distance. He figured he had better get in, lest he get soaked. The storm was travelling quickly, and was in the field he was plowing before he could get out. As the rain fell, he could see it darkening the bare earth. Then something strange happened, the storm stopped moving. He said he could see a clean line of demarcation in the field where the storm had stalled. One one side of the field, it was raining, the other side was dry. He said he walked over to where it was raining and stood on the line separating the wet field from the dry. Half of him got rained on, half stayed dry. He said it was the weirdest thing he had ever seen.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you've enjoyed the little party that I've thrown for myself. It's better to throw a party than to throw a tantrum. Please join me again next week when we go back to school at The New School.