A funny story from my childhood

A recent conversation made me think of childhood and some of the things you go though as children that just... stick with you. That statement will be a pun by the time you're done reading.

So I was about like 9 I think, and I had just gotten a new 10-speed bike. Being SUPER excited, I took off for a race around the neighborhood as fast as I could go.

Now, my front yard at the place I lived at the time had this fat ass barrel cactus about six to seven feet in the center of the yard, surrounded by gravel and slightly up incline. You can already see where this is going.

So I come BARRELING down the street (See what I did there?) and I realize that I am going WAY too hella fast to use the brakes unless I want to take the asphalt express to ouch.

So my parents were at the time on the drive way and they SEE me coming, and like the clairvoyant my dad has always been, he just knew something was about to happen. They're both shouting at me to slow down and... well, I was trying but physics was saying "I don't wanna!'.

End all, I'm trying to gently squeeze the brakes but I don't know what happened... It was almost like the bike, and by extension me, was magnetized to that freaking cactus. I hit that thing *singsong* LIKE A WRECKING BAAAAAALLL... *ahem*

It unseated me and slammed me up against the handlebars, where my legs kicked the cactus full bore. Gravity decided to reinitialize after what felt like an eternity of insanity and helped yank me off the cactus. That or my dad did. I'm a little blurred on that topic.

Needles to say (See? me again) I had thirty-something stickers in my legs and my front tire and frame were thoroughly devastated. It took hours to get them all out and the last, biggest stickers wouldn't come out and I was being a whiny brat in pain so they left them in a while. I remember, because they tried to stealthily yank the thing out while I was asleep. I still remember the look on their faces as I woke up mid-process. *sigh* good times.

I would probably have gained a new respect for that barrel cactus if given time to cope with my idiocy... but alas, it was not to be. Dad chopped the thing down with a shovel a short time after. 

It could have been worse... Dad could have had a Saguaro Cactus in the yard instead.