get out of our way, we have official business to tend to...

17 years ago, when i was a sophmore in high school, i hung around some pretty crazy guys. one of which was a pyromaniac by the name of glen. first time i ever saw glen was when he was in the process of making a bomb out of fire crackers out in west texas. i remember i was driving up to a friend's house; there he was, crouched over one of those old school big wooden spool things the power company uses to stretch out cable. back then we used them as tables.

anyway, all of a sudden from a far distance as im driving up to my friends house, i see this tremendous flame that shoots up about 4 feet in the air, and then i see glen and some friends run like the dickens. anyway, my friend in the car says, "yup, there's glen." well, glen was always coming up with something fun to do for all of us bored teenagers. one day we were coming back to the high school from lunch. there was this favorite street we had in midland that curved gently back and forth (and on a good day with no cops around, you could just go totally straight without following the curve switching from lane to lane automatically as you went down the street). well anyway, we happened to notice that there were some work crews on "our" street, messing up our plans. and to make matters worse, they put up those big orange cones! we were disappointed. well, glen has an idea. just like a video from a car commercial he starts swerving through the cones, back and forth - left to right. it was like a movie. workmen running for their lives - diving for cover.

i always loathed orange cones for some reason. their presence out on an open road has always annoyed me.

in high school, i was always this semi-innocent christian kid that didn't get into too much trouble. the crazy stuff i would do, would usually entail this really twisted sense of humor. well, one day the orange cones and i had a fight, and i won. i was riding in a 1978 GMC stepside pickup.

it looked kind of like this:

well, my brother and i were going down the road, and he says, "hey - i betcha' you wouldn't run over those cones."

i was always the innocent one you know.

he was wrong...

i hate orange cones.

bop bop bop bop bop bop bop.


which brings me to about a month ago.... my wife and i were out on a much needed date...going down a road here in town with a lot of construction. i hate cones! concrete walls on one side, cones on the other - one lane. here comes an ambulance behind us...honking like mad, trying to get through on their way to the hospital. i thought, oh no - there's probably someone in there in really bad condition. i figured that i would just gently push them cones aside - well needless to say, the cones lost again. one particular cone though got mad at me and decided he was going to hang on for dear life underneath my car. everywhere i went, it wouldn't stop making this horrendous scratching noise from beneath my vehicle. did i say that i hate cones? so, i decide im just going to stop right there and take care of this cone situation. well, i get out and people are honking and stuff cause im in their way, and im like, "hey, it's an emergency, hold on!!!" so, im tugging as hard as i can and this cone is just really stuck somewhere up in the under carriage of my car. as you can imagine, my wife is a little horrified at this moment. so, i finally get to where i can get the cone's top underneath one tire so that it'll hold as i finish running over it. ahhhh, finally the cone loosens it's hold and my car is free from it's cold grip. i go a few feet down the road, and i decide that im going to let this lady that was honking at me the whole time go around me. so, here my wife and i are still a little shaken from the emergency ambulance - cone caper, and i decide im going to pull off to the side to let impatient driver lady go around me. well, wouldn't you know, there's that cone again, some how stuck to her back bumper, dragging behind her - with the lady totally unaware! there is no tellin' how far she drug that cone. it was awesome. my wife and i laughed so hard, it was painful.