Painting

My wife and I have been talking about painting parts of our house. We even have the color picked out for our guest half-bath. I have been less than excited about the whole venture. Painting has never been my forte. Perhaps I have a subconscious block against painting. This block most likely extends from some of the painting fiascoes I had growing up.


The first real experience I had with painting came when I was about 12 years old. My father had just finished the basement in our house and Josh and I were assigned to do the “cutting in” and priming of the walls and ceiling. There were a couple big 5 gallon buckets of paint that were going to be used on our room and parts of the rest of the basement. Josh and I got to work with our paint brushes and a couple rollers. We worked on various occasions for several hours a piece. It seemed that no matter how many layers we put on it really didn't look right- so, we just kept adding layers. We must have painted nearly 15 coats on the walls of that room. Finally we asked our dad to come and inspect our masterpiece. He came to the basement (Josh and I were always given a room in the basement, always as far away as possible from my parents' room). He took a look at the room and asked what we had used to paint the room. We proudly showed him the bucket we had used.

His verdict came swiftly and stung like the whip of the task master he was- we had used primer to paint all 15 coats of paint. We still had to paint the whole room again! Josh and I were none too happy. I think we complained about it for weeks. Dad . . . that slavedriver!

I can't get too upset at my dad. Despite our disaster painting our own room he hired us to paint one of the rooms in his actual business. He had just remodelled a couple office rooms where he does business. The carpets were new but painting still needed to be done. A very nice oil based paint was chosen.

Josh and I set down covers on the edges of the new carpet and we taped off the edges, floor boards, removed door knobs, etc. We prepped with primer (remembering our mistake from years earlier) and we began to paint with the nice paint. I set the paint bucket on top of a folding table.

What happened next will live on until both Josh and I no more. My dad's version of this incident is probably the best. He was sitting at his desk doing work and from the other room where Josh and I were working he hears a “thud” and then he heard me say several times “Oh no! Oh no!” and then he saw me running past the door to his office and running back with a handful of paper towels from the bathroom. He knew what had happened as soon as he heard me say “Oh no!”

I had accidentally bumped the table in which Josh and I had set the paint bucket (which was nearly full at the time). The paint bucket fell onto the center of the room carpet where we had not set the tarps. The size of the paint spill was comparable to the recent BP oil-spill- at least it seemed to me at the time.

To my dad's credit he never said a harsh word. In fact, my father has always been a very good man, not to ever put objects and possessions above people. A ruined object (by accident- or not under bad intentions) was no reason to belittle or harshly treat someone.

That carpet stain stayed in that back room for over 10 years. It was in a spot that could never be covered. Maybe that is why that room (which was originally intended to be an office) was used as a storage room.

The Chemistry Set

My father ambitiously gave Josh a microscope and me a chemistry set for Christmas one year. I loved my chemistry set. My dad helped us make a concoction of cobalt which changed colors with heating and cooling. It was the coolest thing ever. Josh and I attempted to do our own experiments with the chemistry set. We would mix rubbing alcohol with various chemicals found in the set. This mixture, in a test tube, we would then put a cork to seal the mixture. We would shake it and then heat the alcohol mixture over a flame.

As the alcohol evaporated from the heat it built up pressure inside the sealed test tube. The concept of heating a liquid in a sealed container was foreign for the likes of a 5 year old. All-of-a-sudden it happened . . . the cork blew off the top of the test tube and the alcohol mixture with it! The flame from the heat source ignited the fumes and the liquid spewing from the test tube. The burning alcohol was spread all over the walls. Combined with the cobalt and various metals and salts dissolved in the alcohol the flames were beautiful colors, purple, blue, red, violet, and orange. Despite the beauty of the flames the fear of burning the house down prompted us to quell the flames. Josh and I rushed to smother the flames, and luckily we did. My parents didn't find out about how close we had come to burning down their house until just recently. In fact, I better give a preemptive warning to my parents if they read this blog that there might be stories here that they've never heard before. We kept them secret for a reason. And boy, there were some close ones!

I guess I am a little late, I should have posted this on the 4th of July. I guess that living in a very humid and wet state has made me forget about the dangers of fire associated with fireworks. We went to a couple parties. One of those parties included a ton of sparklers for the little kids, some of which were running around in bare feet. This reminded me, not that I needed much reminder, of when I stepped on a recently used phosphorus sparkler. It hurt pretty bad, and now when I see a kid with a sparkler and no shoes I cringe.

So, back to the story! (By the way, I'm not sure anyone knows I was responsible for this, there are a few stories to come in future blogs that will feature stories that no one knows about. I feel that enough time has expired to keep myself from getting into trouble- the statute of limitations has expired!) It was the 4th of July and we were out in front of the house lighting off a mixture of legal and illegal fireworks. I think I was about 5 years old at the time. It was great fun! We had flowers, tanks, bottle rockets, and sparklers. I was waving a sparkler around, writing my name in the dark evening. I was having a good ol time. It had been a little dry that summer, no more than usual for Salt Lake, but it hadn't rained in a couple weeks. Our neighbors across the street didn't take care of their lawn and it had grown all spring without being mowed. Combined with the dry climate his yard was a nice tenderbox waiting for my just burnt out sparkler.


I had gone on my way after tossing my sparkler over their fence. Some of the adults noticed that smoke had started to come from the neighbor's otherwise empty yard. Soon flames were visible as their dry grass became fuel for my sparkler which was still clinging to some semblance of purpose, beit destructive or entertaining.

While the adults were scrambling with their garden hoses and buckets I was trying to act cool, like the innocent boy I was. I felt bad at the moment, but I never said a word. The back spot in their yard was an improvement! Good ol sparklers!

Gasoline

One winter evening my brother and I told my parents we were going to play out in the back yard in the snow. We did just that and we built a snowman, but Josh and I weren't building the snowman just to build a snowman. We had plenty of experience building snowmen- a regular snowman was boring! No, this snowman actually served a purpose! He was our target for target practice for our bows and arrows. It was getting dark and we decided that we needed something to help us see where our arrows were going. We found the solution was to put toilet paper on the end of the arrows, dowse it in gasoline and have flaming arrows.

My dad was in the kitchen and noticed a flame going shooting from one end of the yard to the other. And then another. He came out to investigate and found Josh and I with a can of gasoline with our bow and several arrows prepped with paper and gasoline ready to go. Our snowman with a couple arrows already sticking out of him with some residual burning toilet paper.

We got a good lecture about how dangerous gasoline was. This was the first time I remember hearing that lecture, but it definitely wasn't the last time either. A few years later, after having heard the gasoline lecture a few times, my brother and I were playing around with the large plastic cars that my parents had bought as toys for my younger brothers and sisters. These cars are the ones that are big enough for a child to get inside. You propel yourself in these cars with your feet like the Flintstones. Josh and I decided to fill the consul on these cars with gasoline- light them on fire and send on a quick trip down the hill in the back yard. When the cars hit a bump it would slosh around the burning gasoline and would make the fire much bigger. We would dowse the burning car in water which would just spread the flames. Eventually the cars just melted and burned after having done this a few times. This time there would be no lecture, apart from the angry look on his face I remember him saying, “I'm tired of talking!”

Ghostbusters

Josh and I loved (still love) the movie Ghost Busters. We would watch the movie over and over again. We would play ghost busters with our backpacks and parts from mom's vacuum cleaner. The family garden was also a favorite playground. We would dig holes in the garden and then fill the holes with water. We would then take the dirt we had taken from the holes and put it back in and mix it all around to make mud. But this was no ordinary mud. My father had decided to fertilize our garden using chicken manure, which, like cow manure, provides nutrients for a variety of garden plants, it also has the added property of increased aromaticity . . . i.e., it stinks really bad. In fact the aroma from this chicken manure would cause people getting off the bus walking by to gag. My dad even witnessed one person running to the other side of the street while attempting not to throw up.


So it was just natural that Josh and I used this situation to our advantage. We sat waiting for our unsuspecting victims. Our backpacks on with the tube to mom's vacuum somewhere nearby in the garden. We sat quietly. Who would suspect children anyway? The nice men and women getting off the bus in front of our house, in their nice suits and skirts after a long day at work. Walked by our fence, and then . . . . that mud we had concocted, with chicken manure and sopping wet went flying over the fence by the shovel-full as Josh and I shouted, “YOU'VE BEEN SLIMED!!!” I'm not sure if sliming people was in accordance with the Ghost Buster code, but we sure got busted.