Living life in Neutral Five

So there I was, perched at the top of the hill overlooking Twin Lakes....


Wait, wait, wait... back up. We need to start at the beginning.

Growing up I was lucky enough to live less than a mile from Twin Lakes in Clifton Idaho. This quaint little reservoir was surrounded by gentle rolling hills on all sides. Which I might add are very fun to play on with motorcycles and four wheelers going up and around the burms created by other riders.

It was actually quite rare that we hit the lake as a family although many of us went on our own or with our ward youth groups. On this particular occasion we packed all us kids into the car with our cousins Jamie and Stacey and Erin and Aunt Tracey and headed to the lake.

It was sheer pandemonium as the water was invaded and screaming peals of delight from happy kids ensued while the beginnings of sunburns took hold. After a few hours boredom sets in when your mother has repeatedly yelled at you to not drown your sibling. You realize that no matter how hard you try you just can't get them to drown without splashing and drawing her attention. So for yet another day Charlie would live.

Since drowning Charlie was now off the docket, my older brother Jeremy and I decided to climb the rolling hill directly behind where we were enjoying our lake time and see what our house looked like from up there. Apparently in our mind this would be a grand adventure and surely our house would look like a tiny little speck from the top of that miniature Everest.

Off we headed and up we climbed, our feet slipping and sliding in the soft sand and weaving our way around the cactus plants and sagebrush till finally our ascent brought us to the peak of that massive ridge. Okay it was really more like a bald mans head halfway buried and not that much of a ridge at all. We stared down at our house, which for the record looks exactly the same from that peak as it does from a mile down the road from our driveway.

After that giant let down of a view and precious energy spent to climb that hill my brother decided to head back down. As he started walking he told me that when I come down to make sure I walk sideways.
AS IF!!!  Why on earth would I ever take advice from him? I was certain that he was just trying to make me look like a fool when I decided to come down and that he would laugh at me. If there was one thing I knew for sure it was that he could not be trusted. I had been locked in enough closets and been given enough wedgies by him to know that was the most sure thing. Never trust Jeremy ran right through my mind.

By the time I determined that I would head down he was about a third of the way down the hill so I just set forth one foot in front of the other, clomping each foot down, facing forward. Wow I was amazed how easy going down was and I was making great time! Like really great time! Hell, I was running! Oh crap I was running and I couldn't stop! Like a blur I whizzed past him trying to grab his arm and ending up only with a large portion of his skin under my fingernails as my hand tore into his arm in an effort to stop. It failed.

What I succeeded in doing was throwing myself off balance and now instead of running I was tumbling and sliding, end over end, cactus after cactus. It was at this time I could hear someone screaming at the top of their lungs in fear. Turns out that was me. My bruised and scraped body came to a stop at the bottom of the hill with one final slide into home that would make a professional baseball player proud. My thigh looked like hamburger and blood and dirt covered me.

From somewhere in the distance I heard my five year old brother Charlie scream out, "Wow! Did you see that! She came down that hill in NEUTRAL FIVE!!!!"

My ego was as badly bruised and as bloody as my leg. Jeremy made it down yelling, " You moron! I told you to walk sideways!" He actually had the nerve to say it like he had earned the right to be trusted!
"Shut up Jeremy", was all I could muster. Mom ran to me and as tenderly as she could she advised me to go sit in the lake. You know, she just wanted to make sure every possible bacteria and germ had its equal chance to enter my raw and chewed up thigh. Like a moron I sat in the lake as they packed up the stuff and we got into the car to head home and treat my wounds.

We arrived home and mom said, "Go run a warm bath and put baking soda in it with you and soak for a few minutes to get it clean". I followed her instructions and did just that. I found out years later that while I was nursing my wounds they sat in the car and laughed at me for quite some time.

Go figure, for some strange reason this nasty wound which covered then entire right side of my thigh got nice and infected and I wound up at the doctors office having it scrubbed and having gravel, yes gravel removed from it. Ouch again. I am very lucky not to have a scar on my leg from that incident but I will tell you this, I have learned that I can go through life in NEUTRAL FIVE and survive!!!

Neutral Five has now become a family saying to remind us to slow the hell down when we start acting out of control and patent is pending on the phrase. Okay not really but maybe I will look into patenting it.