I've been thinking of a common theme to intertwine three random experiences, but I can not do so at the moment.

First, I'll share a scary moment when my Mom made 3 unsafe lane changes to pull off the interstate and onto the shoulder. We were coming home from church and I figured that she must have discovered one of my grand misbehaviors from church. She really scared me because she unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned across her seat. As a 9-10 year old, I figured that she was going to smack me. Instead, she started off by saying, "Don't you ever do that. If I find out that you're doing something real stupid, I'll skin you alive."

It turns out that a family in another ward had suffered a tragedy. Through ward gossip she learned that a boy about my same age was dared to jump onto the back of a delivery truck for a short ride down the street. Sadly, the truck accelerated and the boy fell off. He died instantly from the fall. My Mom thought that I would likely do the same.

Speaking of "all the kids are doing it", my LDS scout leaders took it upon themselves to safeguard us from the outrageous pop rocks candy. Until they overly lectured us about this dangerous-exploding candy, very few of us knew what they were talking about. So after being told not to do it, a whole lot of us were in possession of the candy to try it out before the pack meeting was under way. We went into a kid's tree house to try some candy. The scoutmaster noticed that we were too quiet for being outside and went to investigate. We got busted (and yanked out of the tree house. He was really livid. Our whole troop was put on a month's probation for experimenting with dangerous candy.

So scouting brings me to my third story. Some dim wit leader thought it was a grand idea to show us young scouts how to respect our tools and not treat them like toys. So he brought in a former circus performer or carnie that could toss and catch knives and hatchets. Of course, we were told to never try it.

Can you guess what happened at the next scouting jamboree?

That's right! Ten little scouts are running around freely tossing hatchets into the air, while a small group of us were trying to pitch our tents. It took a non-LDS scoutmaster and his scouts to round up our little heathens and restore order. My scoutmaster didn't seem to care and his nonchalant style really infuriated the other adults in the jamboree.

At one scout camp, up in Lee's Canyon, north of Las Vegas, each troop had it's own little campsite, with the tents arced around a flag pole. Each campsite was inspected each morning and the Troop or Patrol flag was then raised to a level corresponding with the results of the inspection. A perfect inspection had your flag at the tippy top.

The first three days our flag kept getting lower and lower. The evening of the third day we dug a hole around the flag pole and put our flag below ground level and then got up late the next morning, went to breakfast late and came back to find our flag where we'd left it.

We didn't get into any trouble because no one really cared in our ward. We were trucked up there, dumped, and then picked up at the end of the week. We had no adult supervision at the troop level. This would have been 1959.

Was forced to go to a winter camp... it is where I smoked my first cigarette and I never looked back.