This Blood's For You!

Wow.  So now it's the world of High Finance that we're on about, eh?  I suppose that makes sense, considering how we got here.

If it doesn't make sense to you, go back to my first post of the month and then follow along from there to Geezerguy's blog, and so on...

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Interesting thing, High Finance.  It's entirely relative.  I remember when I was a kid and High Finance to me was fifty cents!  For Lone Duck, Jugglesourcerer and I, we would go a long way for a few coins of the realm, I can tell you that!

One of the best things ever invented (as far as we were concerned) was the returnable bottle.  You could literally find a bottle on the street and, if it wasn't broken, you could get a nickel for it!  That's like, five cents!

 

Won't you lay your money down? 

 

One day, we came across a serious score.  It was a huge beer bottle and we figured we could maybe get a dime for it!  The thing is, we didn't want to take it to the grocery store where we took all the other bottles we found.  As it was a beer bottle, I guess we figured it should go to a liquor store.  Lone Duck was, as the oldest, pretty much in charge of the expedition, so I figure he was the one who set us off across the undeveloped scrub land near where we lived in El Paso, Texas at the time.

 

Now a side note about El Paso.  Being in the desert, it was common for there to be drainage culverts with cement sides strategically built to redirect flash flood waters.  They looked like this...

Naturally, the one we came across that day was not full of water, nor was there any vegetation around it.  It was just this dry ditch.

Now, it was my habit at the time to take full advantage of these things whenever I saw them to pretend to be Spider-Man (as any normal person would!).  I'd get down on my hands and feet, crawl around, and pretend to shoot webs at anything that moved!

So as I said, we came across one of these ditches on this particular day.  Sadly, I neglected to put down the beer bottle before launching into my normal arachno-style routine, and promptly broke the bottle.  This was distressing.

What was more distressing was the gaping wound I ended up with at the base of my thumb!  I was bleeding like I could not remember ever bleeding before!  (I had seen Jugglesourcerer bleed worse, but HIS crazy klutzy E.R. capers are fodder for future blogs, not this one!)  My hand was rapidly covered in blood and I was more than likely going to die from it (as far as I was concerned!).

This, however, is where Lone Duck took his leadership role to heart and came through for his little brother (sort of)!

Okay, so at the time, I was no older than six or seven, which would put Lone Duck, the oldest, at no more than 10, with Jugglesourcerer in the middle somewhere.  Considering our ages, Duck's actions were spot on!

As a Cub Scout, he knew he needed to stop the bleeding.  As an avid watcher of "Emergency!" we all knew I needed a bandage.  Duck had me hold my hand with my other hand and we rushed to what turned out to be a nearby construction site to look for a First-Aid kit.  Not finding one, Duck improvised exceptionally well despite the fact that MacGyver wasn't even thought of yet!  He pack some soft stuff he found around the cut and wrapped the whole mess in duct (Lone Duck?) tape.  It stopped the bleeding and we got home without further mishap.  Lone Duck was my clear hero that day.

Later, as the E.R. nurse was picking the individual strands of fiberglass insulation out of my wound with a pair of tweezers, and piling them in a bowl for disposal, I had occasion to reassess Lone Duck's greatness between the sobs and screams of pain.  I came to the conclusion in my tiny little mind that he was a bad person for doing that to me, so I decided to hate him, as all kids that age would.  But as I look on it now, I think I'l re-elevate The Lone Duck to hero status.  I may have been in pain, but he did what needed to be done to take care of his kid brother!  If he didn't know what the pink soft fuzzy stuff was, at least he had found SOMETHING to help me with!  Thanks Duck!

Besides, I also got this cool scar out of it...

You'll also note, I still have my affinity for Spider-Man!

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So as you can see, I have engaged in the pursuit of High Finance myself, and learned a valuable lesson which is this:

"Whenever you find yourself traveling through scrubland in El Paso, Texas with your brothers on your way to recycle an old beer bottle in the hopes of getting a whole DIME out of it and you come across a cement drainage ditch and ecide to play Spider-Man and break the bottle and cut up your hand and end up having it wrapped in fiber glass and duct tape remember this:  YOU CAN'T RECYCLE THE BROWN BOTTLES YOU TWIT!"

Dang.




-Sage Words