Apologies to the F___ family, and more memories

Almost two years ago, I wrote about the Fornispoo, along with some other memories from my childhood.

OK, I made a mistake. I should not have used last names, for one thing. It unnecessarily embarrassed people who were too young to remember incidents that are burned into my memory. Last week, I got some charming feedback on it, which included a spirited defense of Nickelback's talents. I have gone back to the original post and removed last names, because in retrospect I shouldn't have put them in there in the first place. So my apologies on that. I've left two of the comments up and removed the rest, because I have the power to do so! Muahahahaha.

Here are some more memories I have of growing up. I apologize in advance for any of these that aren't true, but the therapy has really messed up my brain, man.

- When I was 7, my mother slammed my hand in the car door as punishment for leaving a fingerprint on the wall of my bedroom.

- Our neighbors had a special room that no one was allowed into. When their parents were out one day, we snuck in and found 350 rolls of expired toilet paper.

- One afternoon, my stepfather made us a tire swing out of an old radial with a nail in it, and some kite twine. It was constructed on a new spring branch of a rotting maple tree, and if you swung high enough you could actually clear the poison ivy underneath and rocket yourself into the street. A few days later, our next-door dad (let's call him "Ted") came over at night and wrapped the tire up onto the tree. We never could get it down again. It's still there today, with years of collected rainwater. It is one of the state's top five disease vectors for West Nile Virus.

- We were invited over to our neighbors for dinner one night. What would we have? Pizza? Chicken fingers? Burgers? No way. They served kidneys. Braised kidneys. That hadn't been soaked long enough, and still had a big membrane on them. Jessica and I ran home in tears, where my mother was making her company dish. Cream of tomato soup, hot dog slices, onions, and broad egg noodles. It was that day where we developed our lifelong love of deviled ham.

- And still, it was better than the Polynesian chicken over canned Irish potatoes we had each week for Wednesday dinner.

- Each year, we went around for Halloween with the kids in the neighborhood. Back then, we could do it when it was dark, not at 2 PM like the punks do now. It was traditional that we would gather a big sack of candy, walk back past our neighbor's house, and their dad would jump out from behind a tree wearing evil clown makeup, take our bags of candy, and chase us down the street until we spit blood. It became a beloved tradition, trying to get home without being attacked and terrorized by Pantsless the Clown.