| One Christmas, when we we around 13 or 14, Tim got a swell rocket set that worked on compressed air. It was a rather large rocket, probably a Mercury type since this was shortly after John Glenn made his historic 3 orbits around the earth. (Gee, I've made more orbits around the earth than that when I forget to take my medicine!) Anyway, shortly after we had all of our many presents opened, which was about 3.571 seconds for me), Tim started to check out his new rocket set. In those days we didn't bother to go outside to play with our "outside" stuff, we just started messing with it inside. Tim set up the big compressed air rocket on the launching pad and started to pump the air inside it with the hand air pump. After getting fully "fueled up", he hit the launch button (without even a countdown). With a loud "PARUMMMMP", the rocket launched upward at the speed of sound and hit the living room ceiling with a loud "THUMMMP"! It was no problem since the dent it put in the ceiling was barely noticeable due to all the other "scars" the ceiling had from all of the previous "outside" stuff we played with in the living room from countless other times! |
