April 2, 2010

Tell about a practical joke or prank someone played on you.

Lynn and Charles (Skewes) tied me to my bed. Here is the story as I told it in my life’s stories.

Alive or dead dream - tied to bed

When growing up I lived on a farm in Duchesne, Utah. Our home was the last one at the end of the road on blue bench about two miles from town. It seemed like a long way when I was young and now it is hard to believe it is really quite close to town. My cousins from the city (Bountiful) would come to visit us each summer. (The city meant they were from the Wasatch front where houses didn’t seem to end from one end of Davis County to the other end of Utah County.) They always enjoyed coming to Grandma’s place in Duchesne for the summer and often staying with us during a good share of that time as well. However they were full of pranks and I as the younger and probably bothersome part of the equation would often end up on the wrong end of the pranks.

One summer morning prior to awakening to the activities of the day I remember dreaming about playing Cowboys and Indians. That is something now that I hardly dare to even talk about considering political correctness and lawsuits but was a very real part of my childhood. Later in my teen years I came to love the Indian people very much as we had with us during the school months a foster sister from the Navajo nation.

This dream however had me high above the sheds behind the barn in the old cottonwood trees that stood so tall there along the canal bank. I was one of the unfortunate ones that got hit by one of the arrows and lost my balance falling from the tree onto the top of the straw covered shed. You see the shed was made of large logs laid next to each other on a wooden log structure then covered with one to two layers of baled and loose straw. The top of the shed was quite bouncy and soft so landing on it didn’t hurt but I remember laying there trying to determine if I was dead or alive. I just couldn’t figure out why I knew about everything that was still raging around me in this war but I couldn’t move either and so I was somewhat perplexed. The roof of the shed seemed to be moving also lightly tossing me back and forth as lay there mortally wounded. Well my dram ended and I awoke to still being very much alive but unable to move in my bed as my cousin Charlie Skewes and brother Lynn had tied me into my bed with bailing twine and were in the process of moving my bed and I into the clothes closet. No wonder I was not only unable to move from where I lay but the shed was moving also since the real world and my dreams had crossed paths that morning. I still don’t remember how I got out of the bed but I suppose if nothing else my mother probably persuaded a couple of pranksters to release their prey.