I think I am going to write a book. For publication? you ask. You think me not capable? I am still trying to come up with a good title. So far the best I've come up with is "I fell in a hole." I hope I think of something better before I finish the book. I have no idea how long it will take because I still have to live part of it. OK! Let's be honest, most of it.

I suppose that I should have known sometime early in my life that I was destined to fall into a hole. One of my first memories was of the inside of a hospital. I remember a rather dark room where I lay on a table with a tube down my throat. What had happened was I had ingested some sort of chemical from our milkhouse in the barn and I had to have my stomach pumped. I was in the hospital for three days. On the third day my Mom came into room and said me were going home. The nurse said the doctor had not release me and I couldn't leave. My Mom said she didn't care what the Doctor said and we left. That was the first hole I remember. When my Mom stayed with us when she was going thru radiation treatment for cancer, I had opportunities to chat with her. When I told her I remembered that experience she said I was way to young to remember that. But I described the room where they pumped my stomach and the room I stayed in. I even told her what the closet where my clothes were looked like and where my shoes were. She said I was bearly 2 years old.

One winter nite my parents decided to take the horse drawn sleigh a couple of miles away to play cards with the neighbors. I didn't want to go and threw a fit so my Dad said Ok and my parents, and older sister and brother left. I was brave for a nano second. Than a fear I still remember came over me and I ran to my bed. I was still young enough to be sleeping in a crib but old enough to be able to climb in and out. I would stay long enough to get some control than I would venture out but I would come running back and climb as fast as I could in to my bed again. I ventured out once all the way outside to the barn but I heard a noise and I headed back to the house as fast as my little short legs could carry me. I was sure a monster was going to snatch we up for his supper at any moment. I went up and over the side of that crib like a finely tuned athlete and under the covers to safety. When my parents got home I was fast asleep and they were impressed that I was so calm. I talked to my Mom about that and she said she remembered that nite also. She kept saying to my Dad we'd better go home and check on Doug, but he'd say he needs to have the crap scared out of him. But there I was sleeping like a baby. I took great pleasure in the fact he never knew that I did have the crap scared out of me. I got myself out of that hole.

There's the time I was riding a pony as fast as it would go and I wrapped my whip around a fence post. I was yanked off into the fence post and it was off to the Doctor to get stitches.

There's the time I was sitting on the front row in the second grade and I would look at the clock on the front wall cross eyed. My teacher told me to stop several time. Finally she said if you do that once more, you will have to stand behind the door. Well, need I say I spent sometime behind the door?
But that's not the end of the story. Sometime before I had to stand behind the door, someone had carved a design into the door. Yep! You guessed it. I got blamed for it. Down to the Principal's office I went where I received 5 swats with the yardstick. I said I didn't do it but who was going to believe a little cross eyed boy?

In the seventh grade I was called over the intercom to come to the Principal's office. I had no idea why. I couldn't think of anything I had done to deserve to be called to the Principal's office. Maybe a commendation or something. When I got there the principal was standing with a pointer in his hand and as he talked to me he kept hitting the palm of his hand with it. Someone had put some gum on a chair and a girl sat in it and ruined her pretty dress. How I got stuck with the blame I will never know but I got 5 lashings with that pointer.

There were others holes but I think I've made the point that I was destined to spend a significant amount of time in a hole before I got in the hole I'm in now.