On Tuesday, August 28, 2001 11:01 AM, Mike Wallace wrote:

(I can't bring myself to snip any of it.)  :-)
> In a galaxy far, far away when I was a young lad of about 10 and
> living on Merritt Island in Florida a bunch of us neighborhood
> hoodlums used to ride our bikes out to the bay and wade and shoot
> sting ray's with bows and arrows. One day, three of us had waded
> out several hundred yards to about waist depth and had shot several
> rays. (We were young, foolish and stupid then and thought that the
> earth was a infinitely renewable resource in those days.) I missed
> spoting one and stepped dead on his tail. He drove his barb through
> the center of my right foot, through bone and within a 1/4 inch of
> coming through to the top of my foot. He survived and swam off
> leaving me and two of my buds to carry me back to shore trailing a
> lot of blood and sweating like hell how many sharks were going to
> come and eat us before we got me out of the water. After getting
> back to dry land, a little old lady who was fishing close to where we
> got in, packed me up and drove me to the hospital. They had to
> knock me out after my Dad got there to dig the barb out. I did not
> walk for a couple weeks and then did not walk well for several
> months afterwards. To this day, when I walk long distances over
> hard ground, my foot will hurt.

I'm wincing and breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking about it.  :-)

> About two months after this, my dad and I were shrimping off one of
> the bay bridges at night and between shrimp runs, Pop was fishing
> a little too. He caught a pretty decent sized sail cat and when he
> went to grab the fish to take it off the hook, he missed and drove the
> dorsal barg all the way through the meat between his thumb and
> index finger on his left hand. He handed me a pair of wire cutters
> and had me cut the barb off the fish where the fin met the fish's
> body. He then had me pull the fin on through his hand to get it out. I
> learned a few new words when I yanked that fin out of his hand and
> gained a new respect for my Dad in the process. He's a tough old
> bastard. :-)

Sounds to me like you both are!  Living up to my firm belief that without
cowards like me there'd be no yardstick by which to measure the deeds of the
brave, I'd have passed out on both occasions!  :-)

Strike