Exploding heads

I told my dad about this blog and he wanted to know what I wrote. So I said I wrote stuff and I told him that I had written about Mom and the Octopus. He chuckled and wanted to know if I had told the people who read about The Exploding Heads. I said I hadn't and then wondered why I hadn't. Here goes another memory from my annals of time. This does not show me in my brightest light but then entertainment is the key here.

When I was 15 my dad turned 50. My mom threw a party. It was a raucous affair. My dad's friends came from far and wide. This included my Uncle Peter. Him and my dad had been friends since they were 16 in England, they went out to South Africa together and it was mayhem when they got together. I reckon I could write blog after blog over the tricks they pulled on myself, H, S and K (Uncle Peter's daughters - always considered them my bigger sisters) and never be finished - there would always be another tale to tell. Anyhooo, the stage is set for the 50th. There's Uncle Sid (another immigration friend) who thought the Archers in the freezer was ice water and kept topping up his triple whiskey's with it - he didn't surface from his bed for 3 days we were told. There's my dad passed out in the pantry on the pretence he's looking for more soda stream gas bottles. And then there's Uncle Peter, who has discovered tequila and is LOVING tequila mixed with Baileys. "Oooooh this is JUST like ice-cream, I MUST have another" This is while he is dancing with my wine-fuelled mother on the tables.
For my N (my best friend also 15) and I this was a revelation. We'd seen drunk parents before, but never in this state. It was hysterically funny and as we sneaked a few cans of Hunters Gold into the garden, we laughed at how silly they were. And we were good girls, we put all the drunk adults to bed. Dad from the pantry to his bed with Mom, Uncle Peter to the lounge where there was a lovely fire warming it up with it's embers.
So the next morning dawns and there are a lot of sore heads. N and I bound into the dining room as there is bound to be bacon and eggs on offer. As we walk into the dining room, a hush descends. My dad just shakes his head at us in a rueful manner. "Girls, girls" he says
We look at each other, we look at uncle Peter. He looks, quite frankly, pretty awful. Really white and drawn.
Dad is whispering "He nearly died last night girls, because of you". We gasp! US! Surely not, we put him to bed on the mattress on the floor by the fire, covered him up nicely.
"Aaah" he continues with Uncle Peter trying to nod in the background "but you NEVER EVER put someone to bed with their head facing the fire, it swells the brain and well, if I hadn't saved him when I did...."
We were mortified, N started crying. And we apologised and grovelled and everything they wanted that day, they got with bells on.
Fast forward to a day in the future, some 12 years later and I'm 27. And I'm sitting with my dad and Uncle Peter and I'm a mother to a child. And it comes up in conversation and once again, I apologise.
They laugh so much they can barely talk and it turns out: it was a load of crap. It was just a trick.

12 years I believed that, told strangers never to put anyone to bed with their head facing an open fire.

And that's just one of the many ways they fooled all of us girls. There's a lot of things I go to say (that I learnt from them) and then think 'hmmm I wonder if that was true'.

I'm still not convinced that if you play competitively for your country, you get an actual hat.