The Larson Family

A former roommate of mine pointed out to me once that I have a lot of stories about stupid things I did that could have killed me. He then went on to list all the stories I told him about “the time I almost died” or the “time I could have died.” And I realized he was right.

We had many jokes about it, thought it was quite funny, but now I have a son. And I see a lot of me in him. And I really hope he’s not as foolish as I was.

You want an example? OK, how about this… I remember one year, I couldn’t have been more than twelve, it had been a VERY cold winter. I grew up in Minot, ND, home of the Souris River which we locals called the “mouse” river. In the winter, it would freeze solid after a couple weeks of sub zero temperatures, and we thought nothing of walking and even sledding on the ice.

Well that year it had been very cold, but like North Dakota weather so often does, we experienced a dramatic turnaround in temperature that spring. It went from below freezing to fifties and sixties in the course of a couple days. I remember being at my friend’s house–I’m thinking his name was Shawn–which was right on the river. As young boys will do, we climbed the fence in his back yard and went down the riverbank to check out the ice breaking up on the river.

We were thrilled to find huge chunks of ice floating around, like mini Titanic-busters. There were so many of these chunks of ice on the river that they were floating around, bumping into each other with just inches or a few feet between them.

What do boys do when they see such a scenario? Well, they jump to the nearest block of ice and try to cross the river without getting wet, of course. So that’s what we did. We had a great time, jumping from block to block. I managed to avoid getting too wet, although there were a few times that I jumped on a block of ice only to have my weight lift the other end of the block out of the water, soaking my shoes.

Our fun ended when my friend Shawn jumped on a block of ice, and the edge broke off, dunking him in the dirty Mouse river. Luckily, he was near the riverbank and only went in to about knee-depth before he hit bottom. I think we realized then that what we were doing was very dangerous. And I could have died.

Oh, there are lots more of these stories to come. Playing on the freight trains… playing in the abandoned water treatment plant… and much more. Stay tuned. — Troy