Abuse

Addictions

By now most of you know my real name is Steven, as in, "Even Steven". A few of you know I have a younger brother. As in, "Odd Todd".

Anyway, when I was about ten years old we were living on an island in the Florida Keys (Marathon). One of our favorite things as kids was to jump off of things into the water. We jumped from the docks. We jumped from boats. We jumped from fence posts. And we jumped from the top of the boathouses (storage buildings for the stuff you keep in your boat - Bait and fishing stuff that you don't keep in the house)...

So being kids, and loving to jump... We liked to jump from as high as possible. The boat house roofs were only about ten feet above the the ground, but were fifteen above the water.

Well, jumping from fifteen feet is fun.. for a while.. but being kids we quickly got bored. We needed targets to jump at... Rocks were out since they sank to quickly and would have hurt had we landed on one.. so we looked for something soft... Shortly later we were jumping from 15 feet onto giant inner tubes (from inside the giant tires of semi's and dump trucks). Some of these tubes were 4 or 5 feet wide...
 

For a while we tried jumping off the roof onto one inner tube. Then two.. Then three. We were stacking them really high ... and getting more confident... We actually started jumping from 15 feet, head first, at a stack of inner tubes stacked four high with the intent of going through the holes. A few bruises later and we were really laughing and having fun...
 

Then we get the bright idea to stack the inner tubes on the ground (i.e., not in the water). We would jump from the roof, and try to land on our butt, on the outer edge of the top inner tube. This would then spring us way up into the air. And we would fall on the ground in a heap. Laughing.

About this time my step-mother came out to call us for lunch. She stopped in shock to watch children from the ages of 4 to 10 jumping off a building "butt first" onto a stack of inner tubes...
 

Being the typical hysterical step-mother (just kidding) she started screaming, "What kind of idiots are you? How stupid can you be? What would happen if you jumped off the building butt first and missed the inner tubes?"

She screamed, "Get off that building and come down... Right now!"

So I jumped down onto the inner tubes, butt first, and sprang up into the air... She started screaming all over again. My brother was approaching the edge. And she screamed for him to "CLIMB DOWN from the roof".
 

Todd wanted to jump. He really did. But she was standing there glaring at him.. so Todd preceded to the back of the building, supposedly with the intent to climb down.

We all went in.. to eat... We are sitting there eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.. drinking our cokes... about 5 minutes go by... and I hear a weird noise ... just barely.. I have no idea what it is... I started to ask my brother what it was and realized that Todd wasn't there...
 

I got up from the table to go look and see where Todd was... My step mother says "Where are you going..?" I said, "To look for Todd..."

She exploded with anger when she realized that he never came in for lunch...

So we all went outside ... and there was that noise again.... Heeellllppppp.. We realized it is Todd calling for help.. But we can't see him...

We were walking all over looking for him ... we could hear him holler but we couldn't see him...
 

Finally I realized the noise was coming from inside the stack of inner tubes which was about 4 feet tall (remember these are big semi tires).
 

Well, then I saw what was inside the tires and I started laughing. My step mother, sister, father and everyone else came over and started laughing...
 

Now you are probably wondering why we are all laughing when we had heard my brother yelling (weakly) for help from inside a stack of inner tubes.

It was the position he was in.
 

Todd had evidently sneaked back up on the roof for one last jump when we went in to eat. He had jumped off the roof, butt first, onto a stack of inner tubes. But instead of bouncing up in the air, he had gone butt first into the hole in the middle. He had gone all the way down to the ground. His momentum had forced him all the way through the holes in four inner tubes.
 

So my brother was stuck, butt against the ground, arms and legs sticking straight up in the air, inside a stack of 4 giant inner tubes. He wasn't hurt, but he couldn't move. He had been stuck inside the tires unable to move for over 5 minutes...

It was another 5 minutes before we could get him out. We had to stop laughing first.
 

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