I dare you!

in #humour5 years ago

I'm sure that as a kid or a teenager you heard those words.

'I DARE YOU'

 Even more telling was if you accepted the challenge..... or not!

When I was 7 and a half my friend Barbara Ann shrieked, 'I dare you............no, I double dare you!' She had failed a test of courage and she had risen to the bait and dared me back.

The dare was a huge test as to whether or not I had the 'guts' to fling the ball and miss to a chorus of scornful laughter, or hit the target and live to rue that skill. Talk about being caught on the horns of a great dilemma! As a kid who grew up loving words I knew exactly how dangerous that choice was.

Looking at the small group of scrawny kids in my back yard, all mocking me I had little choice. I rose to the challenge...........

Image Source

The big ball was slightly squishy under my nervous finger tips. My heart was hammering in my bony chest. I looked up at the 'bull's eye' and sweat moistened my upper lip. My breathing was coming in short painful gasps. My legs were trembling with the adrenalin I was summoning for the fastest dash I needed to make in about 10 seconds................

WASPS............hundreds of them hanging in a seething mass of tiny lethal bodies under the eave of the rear garage wall. They were very active having swarmed into the largely empty garage a few days before.

We kids were as fascinated by them as a cat watching a mouse. We were for some insane reason tempted to 'play chicken' with them and had been taunting one another to ACTION every afternoon after school.

Barbara Ann hitched her dress into the elastic of her 'bloomers' to give room for her long legs to move as fast as she possibly could. 

The  'ninny'  kids had scattered sensing real danger. The yard was ominously silent.

The tension built up to FEVER pitch and I hurled the ball as hard as I could and unfortunately as fate sometimes dictates, I hit my target.

Image Source

 The immediate terrifying ROAR OF A GAZILLION WINGS spurred us on  as swift as possible to the back veranda that was gauzed in as protection against flies usually. Now it was our only hope against what was turning out to be a run for our lives. A trip over a root of the old oak tree would have meant hundreds of relentless stings and breathing would most likely have stopped within minutes.

Had we factored in all the very real dangers? 

Of course we hadn't but the noise of total ANGER of the swarm lent us the proverbial wings and not daunted by bits of gravel along the path we streaked up to the house. Sadie, my nanny from years before, having heard our screams had the screen door ajar and as we fell into her soft bosom she slammed it - just in time...........but not quite!

I felt the stab of a red hot iron needle in my neck under the collar of my shirt. My hands flew up to get it off but It simply moved on and STUNG me again.... and again.  I learned that day the hard fact that unlike bees who die when they sting their victim the first time, a wasp goes on and on wrecking vengeance on behalf of hundreds of his thwarted swarm. They were still buzzing furiously against the gauze unable to get at us.

Not daunted for a second, Sadie picked up and rolled a fat newpaper and hit my back hard. It did kill the offending wasp but instead of more stings I was badly winded and bruised by her gesture of goodwill!

So, did I win the dare?

 It was hard to say because although I did in fact throw the ball accurately AND I got through the veranda door in time AND I bore my stings bravely, I did get into serious trouble that evening when I was called in to explain my actions to my beloved dad who I hated to disappoint.

I was truly shamefaced by the incredible risk I had subjected the neighbourhood kids to. After a thorough talking to, he put his arm around me and hugged me to his sweet smelling shirt....."what on earth would i do without you my sweet, brave, ridiculous girl'" he murmured and we smiled. I got the message loud and clear. 

      Do not accept a dare because of bravado and the chance to show off.

      Carefully consider whom else you are endangering and the often serious consequences.

     Then ......rather play marbles or 'house' (or some other boring thing!)

But the twinkle in my dad's eye told me that he had accepted many a dare with dire results in his time and in my next post I will share one that could have blown his head off!



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Thank you for your attention.

It's always a pleasure to read your posts.

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Your comment touches my heart.................thank you.
I get a lot of pleasure writing them.

Hiya! Please read this and follow the instructions. You will enjoy this group tremendously. https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@jaynie/jaynie-1547492356561-so-who-wants-join-the-power-house-creatives

Another lovely little story @justjoy :)
Please have a look at your images, when clicking the image source link it still takes one back to your post, not to the webpage it was sourced from. You need to put the page link where the image was sourced from in brackets, not your post link as you've done here.
When that photo is open, you can copy that link & paste it in between the brackets.
eg Image Source
Your image source will only be correctly referenced if the link takes the reader to that original image.
I'm sure you will get it right next time.
Also add the following at the end of your posts to protect your content:
Copyright @justjoy - All Rights Reserved

Ah Lizelle I am obviously challenged regarding this Image Source link. I cannot see a place where I could put the page link where the image was sourced. Are you meaning the word Pixabay where I sourced my photographs. I need a show and tell to put me right!
I appreciate your attempt to help me.
I have asked the person who introduced me to Steemit to meet and show me.
In future I will put in the copyright.
Thanks

I do hope your friend helps you, I tried saving screenshots to guide you but it's difficult, better that someone shows you in person.
You could simply write it like this:
IMG_20190115_215119.png
Will at least link it to the correct website.
Source link
Don't despair though, you will get it right :)

That is a simple and helpful suggestion.
Thank you Lizelle for persevering. You are a truly generous person and all the very best with Lily cottage and your writing which is lovely for 2019

That is a simple and helpful suggestion.
Thank you Lizelle for persevering. You are a truly generous person and all the very best with Lily cottage and your writing which is lovely for 2019

Now I see where the Big bang was coming from:)
In his thoughts on Rhetoric, Aristotle delineated for us (even if in a sexist manner) men's stages in life (youth, prime and old age).
Theoretically we all go though those stages as we age and will act accordingly.
Except for cases of arrested development or the sheer attachment to life's joys and excitements, we'll all age graciously and forget about childish behavior, thus keeping the generational gaps open wide enough for parents/teachers and children to never understand one another.
Thank goodness human behavior is more unpredicatable than that.

I enjoyed reading your comment and am trying my best to age graciously. I don't think I'm succeeding that well because I often side with my grandchildren and have lots of fun with them. At the same time I get on well with my daughter and her husband!On second thoughts maybe that IS what ageing graciously is all about!
I like your thought processes and the way you express yourself.....an accomplished writer.

Thanks a lot. I'm flattered.
It has taken me about 20 years to be praised for trying to do what actually became the source of bullying during my formative years.
I'm glad I lived long enough, and it's been all thanks to poor bear-market-striken Steemit. I'd really hate to see this platform flattened by crypto uncertainty.
It has so much promise.

This expectation that I will in time earn a little crypto cash from writing on the Steemit platform mystifies me completely. If you have the time and inclination Hlezama I would SO appreciate an explanation of how this money is generated and especially what (if anything) I should be doing with my wallet.
Thanks in anticipation!

Hi, @justjoy. The generation of the money per se is a mystery for me. I have not yet grasped the concept (of the crypto currency) and the fact that every day a new crypto currency is invented and some other disappears just blows my mind.

Unfortunately for me (beause i know that for most people around the world this was meant as a long-term investment out of which nobody was expecting to make a living in the short term), the price of Steem is at an all-time low (although some people think it can get even lower). This means that the income we were having is technically gone. I started here because of the money incentive. One year ago, a couple of SBDs was more than what we made in a month or two as university professors.

Now, under hyperinflation, we would need some 5 or more a day to make this profitable. It is very difficult to make that kind o money unless one has a reliable trail of big fish voting for everything we post.

In any case, the way we do it over here is that the half of the rewards (steem or SBDs) we get for post, comments, or curation (our votes for other posts), we usually cash via some trading sites (orinococambio, for instance). It is a very quick process, once our accounts have been activated in these sites and basically we transfer to them the Steems or SBDs (via steem connect) and they deposit in our Venezuelan accounts the equivalent in our currency.

I am not familiar with other trading sites for other countries.

For a long-term investment it takes some patience and strategy to earn some SP so that your vote is worth more and more people may be interested in your blog because of what your support may represent for them.
You have at the moment 48.5 Steem Power, for instance, but you have some 14 Steem in your wallet that you can use to power up, a simple procedure that turns the steem you've received from your posts into SP.

You also have some 25 SBDs in your wallet, every SBD is worth 3 times a Steem now, that means that buying SP is profitable now (if one does not need the money and can spare those SBDs). You might either cash those SBDs into your fiat money or buy SP and get to 137 aproximately (including the 14 Steem turned into SP).

The highest your SP the better. When you get more than 50 SP you can start delegating (lending) SP to curators so that they vote for your post and on your behalf they'll be voting on other posts. Some curators give us weekly reports and dividends for what our lent/delegated SP has produced in that period of time.

Most people who have thousands of SP selfvote their post and that way they guarantee some extra profits with their own existing SP, but it takes investment, alliances, luck or time to accumulate enough SP for a self vote to be worth it.
I hope this made some sense. It took me a while to grasp some of the basic terms here and I still don't quite undertsand much of what happens here with the value of Steem and the voting dynamics.

One thing is true: Quality is not a condition to get support. Only in exceptional cases will whales provide stable support based on the quality of a blog. Many crappy blogs get great payouts, which are the result of some friendly agreements, vote buying or some other trick we don't know.

Sorry I've only picked up your detailed reply now. I am blown away by the detail you have given me. I'm going to have to read and re read to get clarity but thank you a whole heap for your attention.
I decided at the outset that I would persevere for a year and that is still my goal. I am enjoying myself in the mean time.
It is a little disquieting that quality doesn't mean a great deal!
I think I need to buy SP and will look into it and hope I can manage!
I do appreciate your help Hlazama and wish you ALL THE BEST.

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