Growing Up Eighties, Chuckie, 5

The fifth attempt on Chuckie’s life, as every attempt, started innocent enough. We were in the dining room, counting loose change and making rolls that we would later take to the bank and cash in for money to spend at the arcade when we went on vacation the following week.

The cartoon DuckTales was my current favorite. At the beginning of DuckTales, Scrooge McDuck, Uncle Scrooge, would dive into a silo filled with gold coins and swim in it. Great timing, DuckTales. Watch the introduction to DuckTales here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Sb0hGUNIQ

Believing that I could create a real life version of the above scene with the forty dollars in loose change that was spread out on the dining room floor, Chuckie and I attempted to swim through the coin. No. We didn’t have enough. I asked Mom for more and she gave me what was in her purse. We still didn’t have enough. It wasn’t about the money. It was about wanting to know what it felt like to swim through coins. Yeah. I wish I still felt the same way today.

Realizing that we weren’t going to accomplish a recreation of the DuckTales beginning, I instructed Chuckie to lie on the floor, face up. My plan was to throw ALL of the coin up into the air so that Chuckie could then tell me what it felt like to have his face pelted with coins. Honestly, I have no idea what I was thinking.

Chuckie started laughing right before I threw ALL of the coin into the air. And then he stopped laughing. He started choking uncontrollably. A bunch of coins made a new home in Chuckie’s throat.

Mom called Poison Control, embarrassingly, again.

We went to the hospital for this one, too.

It is fair to say that at this point in our young lives, my mother was probably terrified that child protection services was after her. But there was no way to stop us.