Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw Read Free Book Online Page A

just in the kind of way that I knew once Pat went through the work of acquiring the rope, he would be less likely not to allow me to at least try my idea.
    Once he had the rope, I explained that our parents might not like what we were going to do, but none of them were home and it wouldn’t take long, so everything would be fine. My idea was to tie a noose on one end of the rope for my brother to lie in, loop the rope up over the basketball hoop, and attach the other end to my wheelchair. I would drive in reverse, which would pull my brother up to the height of the rim so he could chill there while we threw him alley-oops. It was perfect and nothing could go wrong.
    Andrew and Pat surprisingly agreed, and we started setting up the system. My brother, being the youngest and most daring of the three of us, just assumed that he would be the one being pulled up to dunk. On our first attempt, as I slammed my chair into reverse, my brother shrieked in pain and I quickly let him down before he was a foot off the ground. The rough rope on his bare skin (he had his shirt off because it was hot), in addition to his entire body weight being supported by a rope going across his stomach, apparently hurt pretty bad. I told Pat to go grab a couch pillow.

    Oh, did I mention I’m also an artist?
    The next try, with the couch pillow between the rope and my brother’s body, worked much better, and to all of our amazement, he started lifting off the ground towards the basket. Then we had a problem. My wheelchair ran out of strength to keep lifting him, and despite being in full reverse, neither of us were moving. Pat ran over, grabbed the rope, and pulled with me; slowly my brother inched higher. As he neared the top of the basket, he became significantly heavier, which is probably some kind of physics problem, but I don’t understand it. My tires started spinning and we lost a little ground. For a good five minutes we battled gravity in this manner, while my brother bobbed up and down like something that bobs up and down.
    All of a sudden I heard someone scream, “WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING?” It was my dad, and to my relief he was laughing. He walked over, saw us struggling to keep my brother in the air, and said that probably wasn’t very good for my chair. Defeated, we lowered my brother back down and begrudgingly untied both ends of the rope.
    Then I had an even bigger problem. I noticed my wheelchair now only turned left; I couldn’t drive in a straight line or turn right at all. My dad noticed, too, and came over to see if the rope had knocked something out of whack.
    It turned out that our little stunt had completely destroyed both my rear gear motors, which had to be replaced at the price of $4,000 each. Whoops.
    You have to have fun somehow, and we certainly did.

chapter 12
    daydreaming
    When I was young, I went through an odd phase where I constantly had these intensely detailed daydreams about having a paintball fight inside my elementary school. I’ve never held a paintball gun. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even been with someone who’s had a paintball gun. Water guns were as far as my parents ever let us get in that realm of entertainment.
    The most experience I’ve had with guns was that Pat’s older brother had a BB gun that was occasionally brought out while I was at their house. His brother was in high school and fully aware of the incredible control he had over us with that gun in his hands. He only ever shot Pat, but the howls of pain that escaped his mouth when he did made me flinch whenever the gun’s barrel swung in my direction. We simply had to bow down and concede whatever his brother wanted once the gun came out.
Brother: I’m playing video games now.
Pat: NO. We’re playing. Mom said we could.
Brother: [gets gun] I’m playing video games now.
Pat: You’re playing video games now. We love you.
    My experience with paintball guns was even further limited. I once found an unpopped paintball