When I grow up, I wanna be a wookie.

So, back to Robyn and Skeeter's house for another tale of my youth. At this house in the nether reaches of the great Blue Mounds, my family would gather for the Fourth of July yearly. This resulted in about 20 grandkids running around and playing with each other to varying degrees: some actually played together, some just sort of talked, and some just picked on the younger ones. I was one of the younger ones (not to mention the fact I was skinny with a rather freakishly large head), so I was picked on incessantly. Paired with my equally skinny and top heavy cousin Christopher, we were the butt end of all older grandkids' jokes. But sometimes, just sometimes, they would actually play with us! Lo, what grand days those were!

I think every kid around our age had one thing in common: at some point in their youth, they played out the Star Wars saga. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and Darth made an appearance regularly at our Fourth of July picnics, as I'm sure they did for most people. When the older cousins would say they were going to play Star Wars, it rang like incredibly nerdy music in my cavernous cabeza. Christopher and I would immediately run over to join the passel of kiddies, eagerly awaiting our assignment from the older cousins. Were we going to get to be Luke? Nah, that was for the older kids. Oooh, maybe because of our size, we could be Yoda? Ah, nope, there were older cousins of smaller stature that would play him too. Wait, we could be loyal legions to Darth as Stormtroopers! At least then we could have guns (sticks). Sure, we might die, but there's always a need for more Stormtroopers! We could respawn and have more fun and...

Oh, we're Ewoks? Again? Well, I guess that's okay. We get to carry sticks that represent, well, sticks. And we can throw rocks that are clever metaphors for, uh, rocks. But those rocks in the movie were a metaphor for, hmmm, something I'm sure. So, in a completely metaphorical way, we were metaphors for a simile that was representing something... I got nothing. We were fucking Ewoks. We were the background extras of the Star Wars universe: indecipherable from one another and even when we got the top billing, no one cared. We were a side note that happened to get a bit of glory killing inept henchmen. And then we sang fake words. Awesome.

But at least we were included! We got to play with the big kids. It was amazing. Well, amazing for about 10 minutes. It was then we learned where the Ewoks were to reside. "Why, it must have been the magical forest moon of Endor," you're probably saying incredulously. "It must have been amazing."

I assure you, it was not amazing.

It's worth mentioning now that my aunt and uncle were obsessed with their Burmese Mountain Dogs. For those of you that don't know what they are, here's there Wikipedia page. Basically, they're St. Bernards that have a slightly different coloration. They're big, lovable, and terribly expensive if pure bred because of genetic problems. They also require a lot of space, and if you're going to have them in a kennel, it has to be a rather large kennel. You also need to make sure if you have a kennel that the handle for the kennel is high so your dog can't trip it. And did I mention these dogs, being as huge as they are, will produce an inordinately large amount of waste? Well, they do, and their kennel definitely reflected that fact with its smell. How do I know what that dog kennel smelled like, you ask?

Because that was the magical forest moon of Endor. Yep, the Ewoks were based out of a dog kennel. The dogs were usually out running around at this point, so at least we weren't getting mauled by these huge, bloodthirsty mongrels (a quick note: these dogs were not bloodthirsty at all, instead they were rather docile and even-tempered). But it did smell like large dog and large dog bodily functions. What a wonderful moon we Ewoks resided upon. But at least we were being included and we got to play Star Wars!

Not exactly. The big kids basically locked us in because we were too short to reach the high latch on the gate (at least we know it worked for keeping something in). So my cousin and I would play Ewoks (hey, if were playing Star Wars, then we weren't going to waste that opportunity) while the older cousins ran around on Endor and Tatooine, fighting Rancors and Wampas, while they rode on their Banthas and Tauntauns (I'm a nerd, so sue me). All Christopher and I wanted to was be included as we loved Star Wars so much. To an extent, we were included, but stupid Ewoks never got to do anything. My older cousins were lame (but still so cool!).

All I know is that if my kids wanna play Star Wars, I will gladly play with them. They won't have to be Ewoks, they can be whatever they want.

So long as it's not Han. That role is taken.

Softball and my family

I love my family. They are a bunch of weird, loud people, all of whom I have something in common with (besides DNA), even if it's only a small thing. My father's side of the family happens to be a rather large family (Dad being number 8 of 10 kids), which nowadays doesn't usually get together all at once. Because of the sheer size of the family and the fact most of the grandkids have started their own families, it gets harder and harder to get everyone in the same place at once. But when I was younger, we had regular meetings of the entire Buehl clan, with upwards of 50 of us at once at the same place. Some of my favorite memories came from my Aunt Robyn and Uncle Skeeter's (his real name is Kent, but he's Skeeter or Skippy to the majority of our family) house near Blue Mounds, WI.

Now, I'm not surprised if you've never really heard of Blue Mounds. It has under 1,000 people in it. It's not a particularly popular tourist destination (but then again, neither is Wisconsin as a whole). But it is actually quite pretty, as it's the tallest point in Wisconsin. It's a village surrounded by a state park. My Aunt and Uncle lived outside of this place, in one of the many valleys surrounded by towering peaks (towering for the Midwest, anyway). And of course, as you would suspect, they had a couple of very large hills on their farmette.

It was on one of these hills my story for today happened. My uncle Kerry was at the bottom of the hill, hitting a softball to some of the older grandkids that were spread out on the hill face. I was about 4 or 5 at the time, so I was not participating in the game, though I was watching intently with my cousin Christopher (who is a week younger than I am). Now, I don't remember this as vividly as others do, so this is a mish mash of what I can recall and eyewitness accounts, but what I can tell you for sure is 1) this did happen and 2) it was hilarious.

So, my uncle Kerry is about 6'2" and over 200 lbs. He's not a small guy, by any means. And he could hit a ball very hard. In fact, he didn't really have a soft touch for anything; he was all about power. This was the guy who would throw a Nerf football at you (god help you if it was an actual football) and it would hiss as it came at you, a dull thud resonating from your chest as you tried to catch it but couldn't react fast enough to close your hands. And that was when he was throwing right handed. He would then get tired with that arm, switch to his left arm (which was his natural throwing arm), and bruise your chest even worse until you had a bruised rib or collapsed lung, which ever came first (often they came simultaneously). He was an ambidextrous merchant of death. Now apply that to him hitting a softball, and you understand why at 5 years old, I chose to stay out of the game.

Well, by all accounts, my cousin Jeremy (who would have been around 7 or 8) was trying to keep out of the game as well. Of course, he was trying to keep out of the game by playing on the same hillside, just not in the direct line of the ball. Of course, Kerry got a hold of a ball pretty well (as he did rather often) and the kids scrambled to catch the ball. The only problem was that this wasn't so much a pop fly; it was more a heat seeking line drive of unconsciousness. And try as Kerry may, he couldn't get any words out as the ball veered towards Jeremy's head like a smart bomb.

Bear in mind that we Buehl's are famous for two things: our senses of humor and our enormous heads. Both of those came into play as the softball struck my cousin's mondo melon and knocked him out of his Chuck Taylor's. According to some people there he was out like a light for a good minute or so, but others say that he began wailing immediately like a hydrocephalic banshee. In either case, he was hurt and my uncle Kerry was laughing while trying to show concern for what he had done. He didn't come off as particularly concerned when he started recanting the story almost immediately, complete with sound effects and hand motions, but eventually Jeremy was fine (as fine as you can be in our family) and everyone was fine with laughing at the story (that took approximately 20 minutes). And to this day, Jeremy still swears he can't remember it happening (probably because of massive head trauma), but everyone else in our family sure as hell can.