One time when I was young, my brother and I were bored. We lived out in the middle of nowhere and often there just wasn’t anything to do. Nothing at all.
I would like that again, you know, to be bored and have long stretches of days and weeks when you could play in fields and just have fun.
“Let’s go get some blackberries," I said as we walked along a long dirt road.
We found the wild blackberry bushes and went to the other side of them, where we could get the biggest blackberries. We ate a lot.
“Look at that big truck," said my older brother.
I grabbed some more blackberries and marveled to myself how their color was leaking onto my hands.
“I have an idea," he said. “Let’s see if we can hit the cars as they come by with blackberries."
“I don’t know," I said
“Don’t worry. They can’t see us because we are hiding back here behind the blackberry bushes.
“Okay," I said.
So we waited and then whenever a car or truck came by, we would toss a blackberry and try to hit the vehicle. It was wrong, of course.
After a while we just tossed it right away when the car came by and didn’t really look any more. After all, we needed some time to pick more blackberries to eat.
“Hey you two!" yelled our father, whom we had not seen come our way.
We rushed over to see our Dad standing next to a policeman and his police car.
“Have you two been hitting cars with blackberries?" he asked us.
“Yes," we both answered. We were in trouble.
“Go inside the house."
Well, we got a firm lecture after the policeman left. Evidently we had not even seen the police car drive by during our time of throwing blackberries at cars and we had hit the officer’s windshield.
I learned something important that day, and that is that blackberries are for eating and not for throwing at cars and trucks.
