Reminiscing on our youth

A discussion held at the office this week had me reminiscing on my childhood and how crazy it must have been to raise three boys that were five years apart.

My brothers and I had our fair share of good and bad times. We played football in the yard. Rain, shine, snow, hail, you name it. We’d tackle each other and me being the oldest, I had a size advantage on my younger brothers. I’d say I won quite a bit of those yard football games but probably not as many as I should have being the oldest of the three boys.

I do feel bad looking back at it. Not for showing a lack of mercy to my brothers during competitions, but to our poor baby sitters who had to keep up with three boys running around like chickens with their heads cut off all day.

My parents both worked at their respective jobs during the summers and so our baby sitters were tasked with spending a whole, or most, of a summer with us.

It wasn’t as easy as turning on the television and letting us zone out into the pixeled abyss. My parents wanted us to be active and spend a good amount of time outside or go somewhere like a water park to do something.

We didn’t mind doing those things. When we got older, we started hitting golf balls from our yard into the fields around our house. One poor baby sitter was there when my youngest brother Josh walked into the swing of my other brother, Andy. The golf club caught Josh in the mouth and knocked some of his teeth out. Our baby sitter was horrified.

It wasn’t too long after that and we were trusted to stay home on our own. We got into our fights and occasionally beat on each other. I’ll still always remember getting an iPod Touch thrown into my shin. Mostly because I still have a dent in my shin to this day. We even created our own version of tackle basketball called “Mogwai” where we played in our basement on a Nerf hoop and had to tackle the other person before they could score.

We all three had stitches, broken bones and other bumps and bruises throughout our childhood. We’d paint ball with each other and some friends and shoot each other with the paint ball guns for fun. We were fortunate enough to grow older with different toys like a dirt bike or a basketball hoop. We were 10 miles out of Colby and so any sort of entertainment we wanted, we had to provide ourselves.

We truly embodied the saying, “Boys will be boys” but God bless our baby sitters. I’ll be sure when, or if I have kids, to remember what I put our baby sitters through and tip day care providers or baby sitters of my kids accordingly.

Speeding

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