{"id":562,"date":"2017-12-02T22:02:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T03:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=562"},"modified":"2017-12-02T22:02:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-03T03:02:23","slug":"living-dangerously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=562","title":{"rendered":"LIVING DANGEROUSLY"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction,\u00a0 and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction.\u00a0 Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon<\/strong>.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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Mama and the first four of us young’uns in 1949–about the time of the firecracker escapade.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

My mother and father were not the kind of parents who stayed awake at night fretting about ways to keep their children safe.\u00a0 Perhaps because they were so young (Mama fourteen and Daddy just short of twenty when they married) it didn\u2019t occur to them that anything bad could happen to us five young\u2019uns.\u00a0 Or maybe it was because they had been raised the same way and had lived to tell the tale.\u00a0 Whatever their thinking\u2014or lack thereof\u2014the result was the same:\u00a0 Jean, John, Jerry, Mike, and I were never denied the use of knives, scissors, razor blades, ice picks, you name it.\u00a0 My sister once passed out using cleaning fluid to remove a spot from her coat.\u00a0 When she regained consciousness and we cleaned up the blood from the cut the doorframe had inflicted on her scalp, Mama said,\u00a0 \u201cNext time go outside and sit down when you use cleaning fluid, then you won\u2019t fall so far.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One of my earliest memories is when I was three or four and trying to chop wood with a real ax while my parents watched from the back steps.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t succeed in chopping any wood, but I managed to slice my calf.\u00a0 My parents laughed while my leg gushed blood and I went into hysterics.\u00a0 Daddy said, \u201cReckon that\u2019ll learn you to be more careful.\u201d\u00a0 I guess it did, because I only have one scar\u2014an inch and a half long\u2014on my left shin.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My brothers built tree houses that were two or three stories high in the tallest trees they could find.\u00a0 As far as I know, they only had one fall as a result.\u00a0 Jerry made a misstep on the \u201cporch\u201d of a house fifty or sixty feet up, and off he plunged.\u00a0 The only thing that saved his life was that it was a tree with a lot of limbs to break his fall.\u00a0 Whump-whump-whump!\u00a0 He was black and blue and bleeding in several places when he landed, but he knew better than to report the accident to Mama.\u00a0 Instead, he concocted a story of a dog chasing him through a briar patch, but I\u2019m not sure he actually needed a cover story.\u00a0 It required blood, and a lot of it, to fully capture Mama\u2019s attention.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I once succeeded in getting Mama\u2019s attention big time.\u00a0 I dropped a sharp paring knife, which bounced up and stabbed the nest of varicose veins on the front of Mama\u2019s calf.\u00a0 Dark red blood spurted out and puddled on the floor.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m going to whup you when I\u2019m able,\u201d Mama yelled, running to get a washcloth to staunch the blood.\u00a0 However, she changed her tune when the blood stopped and she discovered the varicose veins were totally drained.\u00a0 They never returned.\u00a0 Mama said if she\u2019d known I had that talent she\u2019d have let me fix her other leg too.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My brother John began building the morning fire in our heater when he was nine or ten.\u00a0 He was allowed to use kerosene to help it get started\u2014and just about any paper item around the house except the Bible was fair tinder.\u00a0 Once when other kindling was scarce he grabbed my dictionary\u2014a gift from my favorite uncle\u2014and ripped out pages through the G section.\u00a0 Mama didn\u2019t have any problem with that, but I did.\u00a0 I was furious for years.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

John and Jerry liked to swim in Mill Creek, especially when it flooded.\u00a0 One time when the flood water was particularly high, Jerry almost didn\u2019t make it across.\u00a0 The current was so swift and filled with debris that he was thoroughly pummeled and exhausted by the time he managed to heave himself onto the other bank.\u00a0 It was time to pull out the briar patch cover story!<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When I was eleven, Daddy brought a bunch of firecrackers home one Fourth of July.\u00a0 He gave me the bag and told me to divide them with my younger sister and the oldest of my brothers.\u00a0 John was six at that time.\u00a0 I guess Daddy thought that at two, Jerry was a bit too young.\u00a0 So we divided the crackers and the matches three ways and went about the yard finding things to blow up.\u00a0 Nobody told me to, but I did supervise John for the first four or five crackers he lit. Miraculously, we survived with all our hands and fingers.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Mama was careful about a few things.\u00a0 I was maybe seven when we first rented a house with electricity.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t ever stick anything into a plug-in or a socket,\u201d she warned me over and over.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I would ever have thought of doing such a thing if Mama hadn\u2019t kept bringing it up. But she did, and, like Eve in the Garden I finally could stand temptation no longer:\u00a0 One day I climbed up on a chair and stuck a hair pin into an outlet where the iron had recently been plugged.\u00a0 Wham!\u00a0 I was thrown halfway across the room.\u00a0 Mama never knew why a fuse was blown and all the lights went out, and I sure wasn\u2019t going to tell her.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

They say that children in primitive cultures rarely burn or cut themselves, or drown, because nothing is denied as being too dangerous, and therefore they learn important skills at an early age.\u00a0 Sure, they may lose or damage body parts sometimes, but the ones who survive are ready for real life.\u00a0 Though I believe this is probably true, I was unwilling to risk my children learning competence in such a dangerous way.\u00a0 But my sons are grown now.\u00a0 I think I\u2019ll give them pocket knives for Christmas\u2014and maybe scissors.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But there will be no fireworks until they are older!<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction,\u00a0 and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction.\u00a0 Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon. Mama and the first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}