Fired Up

‘T’ and his friends were digging a hole.

But not just any hole.

This was to be a hole of parts. Something stupendous. Mind blowing.

A hole to be remembered.

And it was.

Just for all the wrong reasons.

Maybe I should explain…

The boys had been digging for quite some time.

It probably seemed much longer to them than it was in reality, but that doesn’t matter.

Because, regardless of how long they had been digging, they were getting tired.

And bored.

Remember the saying, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’?

Well, tired muscles and boredom are the ‘Father’s of desperate creativity’. And yes, I just made that up.

Because these boys were ready to try anything to get their giant, stupendous hole in the ground.

Except work hard.

Then one of them had—what to him was—an astounding idea.

They would get their Olympic-sized hole.

And they wouldn’t have to do much work.

I think it was this last that got everyone’s attention.

They all looked at him sceptically. “How?”someone asked.

He explained that he had a bunch of fireworks and firecrackers.

Now he really had their attention!

“Let’s put them all in our hole and light them. The resulting explosion will do our work for us.”

Now you have to know that a group of little boys are definitely NOT going to turn down this idea.

They helped him gather up his fireworks…

And dump the entire mass into the hole.

All was good so far.

They lit the fuses.

Still okay.

And that was the precise moment ‘T’s’ mother came out into the yard to collect the laundry that had been drying on the line.

A job that put her in close proximity to the hole.

Oh, not close enough that the boys were worried about her safety.

Just close enough that they were worried about their own if she caught sight of what they were doing.

Meanwhile the fuses were still hissing happily away in the hole.

One of the boys got the brilliant idea of covering the hole (and their soon-to-be crime) with a sheet of plywood.

Which they did.

Then, as a last precaution, they all stood on said plywood.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. Boys standing on a flimsy sheet of plywood over a hole containing a boatload of explosives.

The good news? They got their hole.

The bad news?

They almost achieved orbit.

The explosives…erm…exploded.

The plywood disintegrated.

And several small boy bodies were tossed around like wood chips. (Which were also plentiful—owing to the shattering of their plywood Crime-cover.)

They survived.

I know you were worried so I thought I mention it.

But I think ‘T’s’ mom grounded him from explosives for the rest of his natural life—as well as that of any future children/grandchildren.

The hole may still be there.

Being used for something spectacular.

Well, that’s what I like to think…