Contributing Writer

The day started like any other lazy summer day at 110 Flamingo Street.�I

woke up Twin Brother Mark about ten o'clock by beating him with my pillow,

Mom was rearranging the dust on the hardwood floors downstairs, and outside

the temperature was already in the low eighties and heading for the mid-nineties.�There

was no wind, and the humidity was so thick you could see it in the air, making

it hard even to breathe, much less play any games.�That's why my three

brothers and I had decided to stay inside for the entire day.�Mom was thrilled.

We'd already given the Sister a cherry-belly, flushed a gold fish down

the toilet, played tag till Mom got mad, broke the knob off the black and

white TV in the living room, and it wasn't even lunchtime yet.�Bored

out of our minds, rolling around on the floor, inside a hot house cooled

only by three box fans humming away quietly precariously propped in the windows;

you'd think we couldn't get into any more trouble. (You haven't

read many of my columns, have ya? Getting into trouble was easy for us.)

It was Big Brother James who came up with the idea. He'd just won the

fifth game of rock-paper-scissors-dynamite when he said, "Hey guys,

I got a great idea."

Oh no, I thought, whenever he say's that, someone always gets hurt.

"Let's built a Go-Cart!"

I must admit when he explained what we were about to do, it did sound like

a good idea and a really fun one.� It was simple enough; we needed to get

out of the house.�Mom had been telling us that for the last hour.�We didn't

tell her what we were about to do, just that we all were going outside for

a couple of hours. That made her happy. Dad pulled his rusty yellow work

truck in the driveway as we all came pouring out of the house.�He knew we

were up to something; we all had that sneaky look, "Okay kids, now what

are y'all about to do?"

James told him we were going to build a Go-Cart and asked if we could use

some of his tools?� Dad said okay, and as we ran around