For those of you who have had the opportunity to be around more that one of the Galaviz siblings at a time, you have heard some crazy stories of things we have done to each other while growing up. This usually happens during our family gatherings, whether it be someones birthday, holiday or a “just because” dinner.

For the next couple of posts, I will try to document some of these stories. Keep in mind these stories will be from my point of view. I will do my best to include all pertinent information important to the story.

With that being said, on to the first story…..

The Infamous Tire Swing.

I only start with this story because it involves myself. This particular incident happened in the late 80’s I believe I was about 10 years old and Adam was 6 or 7. The important prop in this story as you can guess, is a tire swing. I don’t know where this tire swing came from because it was not like any other traditional tire swing out there. It looked more like this…

Made out of a hard plastic with a hole on top to be able to tie it to a rope. (The hard plastic will become an important detail later.) I remember sitting in the living room trying to watch TV, but there was this noise outside that was bothering me. When I looked out the back door window, I could see Adam sitting in the tire swing pretending to be Superman. More like he had the swing around his waist so that he can put his arms out in front of himself to get the “Superman” feeling of flying. He would run as far as the rope would let him go and swing back towards the ground narrowly missing it by a few inches while yelling “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

This was so annoying to me, I kicked the closed door and yelled “Adam! Cut it out!” He just laughed at me and kept on doing it. I went back to the couch to continue watching my TV show and after a couple of minutes it got quiet so I assumed he found something better to do. Then it started back up again except this time, he was yelling “Weeeee!!!!!!!” even louder. I got back up to look out the door and in true Galaviz fashion, he had improved on his initial launch.

He had retrieved my fathers 6 foot ladder and instead of running to build up his initial momentum, he was now jumping off the top of the ladder. This of course was better because you can swing higher and faster. This was even more annoying to me than his previous swinging, so I kicked the door even harder and yelled at him to stop it. But I guess a kid, his swing, and a ladder are inseparable. He was not stopping, so back to the couch I went.

After a few minutes of “Weeeeeeee!!!!”, it stopped again. I immediately got up to see what he was going to do next, only to find that he wasn’t in the backyard anymore. I didn’t know where he went, but I came up with an idea that would sure put a stop to his swinging. I went into the kitchen and got one of the dinner knives. I snuck outside and started cutting the rope where it was tied to the tire swing. I left just enough uncut so that the tire swing was still suspended from the tree without falling. To this day I still don’t know why I did that.

So I went back inside and put the knife away. As time went by, I completely forgot about my sabotage to the tire swing. Next thing I know, Adam walks inside holding his stomach, face covered in dirt and tears. My thought was “What the……..Oh yea! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” Apparently, when Adam disappeared, he went next door to get one of the neighbor kids to show him what he had come up with. When Adam came back with him, he got inside the tire and climbed to the top of the ladder. When he jumped off and got close to the ground, the rope snapped and Adam fell face first into the dirt. Of course the neighbor kid was like “What the hell just happened?” and he to started laughing. Once Adam saw me laughing, he knew I had something to do with it and tried to hit me, but his stomach hurt too much. He just ran off, trying to find someone to tell. Because I had forgotten to wait for Adam to come back so that I could witness it, I was forced to hear what happened from the neighbor kid.

To this day I wish I could have seen him jump off that ladder and see that look on his face of “I’m going to show this kid something awesome. Yea!” And then the surprised look when the rope broke hurling him into the dirt. He he. We all still laugh to this day.