Oddbean

Inspired by @HODL, here’s one of my favorite ‘dumbass teenage boys do dumbass shit’ stories: During the summer between our sophomore and junior years, my friends and I’s favorite way to pass a summer day was fucking around at various parks around town. We’d usually start out the day fishing, but things generally quickly devolved into finding ways to get the adrenaline flowing. We’d catch snakes (2 of which escaped a cage in my basement and were literally never again seen 😂), trap snapping turtles, noodle for catfish, ya know, manly shit. But one day we decided to kick it up a notch, and that’s when things got interesting. While ‘walking the River’ at one of our favorite parks outside of town we came across some never before seen train tracks. Obviously we immediately did what any red blooded male teenager would do, throw shit at the trains as they passed by! We entertained ourselves for a few hours chucking rocks, railroad spikes, sticks, etc. at the passing trains. But when that inevitably got boring, my buddy Mitch came up with a great idea. Let’s pile a bunch of shit on the tracks and watch the train blast through it! So, we proceeded to spend the next hour or so piling up railroad ties, big ass rocks, and fallen tree branches onto the tracks. There were a couple of times when someone would say, “that’s probably enough,” then the rest of us would tell him to stop being a pussy and to go get some more shit. Finally, we heard it. The next train was approaching. We hid down the hill behind some trees and waited to see our masterpiece get blown into a million pieces. And holy shit did it ever! It sounded like an explosion when it got hit, and shit literally went flying everywhere. We were cheering, laughing and hollering like apes when all the sudden we hear the train hit the brakes… It took a minute to register what was happening. The train was stopping, and we needed to get the fuck outta there asap. By the time we collected our wits and started running we saw the train conductor climb out of the now stopped train and yell, “get back here you assholes!” Holy shit! Time to get a move on boys! We ran as fast as we could, following the river we had been walking when we found the tracks. I lost a shoe at some point and was running half barefooted for what felt like 5 miles (probably like 1/2 mile in reality). We eventually came to a field by a road we recognized and stopped for a second to look back. Thankfully, we’d lost the conductor. Truthfully, I doubt he ever pursued us farther than like a hundred feet, but we weren’t going to stick around and find out what he had in mind for us if he caught us. In the end it was a successful summer day full of sunshine, adrenaline, and fucking shit up. A dumbass teenage boys dream 😂. And, yes, we did this many more times that summer, lmao. Good times.