I needed a little luck and things to line up just right to pull this one off. I made a zip line that ran from a branch high up in a tree down to the ground. I connected a full sized punching bag to the line and set it up in the tree. I would lure Wendell in using a piñata as the bait.
In 5th grade my teacher had the class
make paper-mâché
globes. I still had mine. I cut a small hole in it and filled it with some
polished rocks that I found. Now it was
a piñata.
I approached Wendell holding the piñata.
“Hey brother, you wanna practice hitting a piñata? You’ll be the star of every birthday party with
a little practice.”
“You’re gonna let me break your globe? Is there candy inside?” he asked.
“Sure. Let’s
go outside. Here’s the baseball
bat. Oh yeah, let me put the blindfold
on you. Come on.”
I guided Wendell out to our backyard where the zip
line was set up. “I only have one shot
at this, so I’d better get it right the first time,” I told myself.
“Okay, the piñata is right in front of you,” I told
him as I pulled the twine that sent the trap into motion.
The punching bag sped down the zip line faster than
I thought it would.
“You
missed!” I taunted my little brother.
“You’re supposed to HIT the piñata, not GET HIT!”
“Aw, gasp, ow,” he grunted as he sat up, stunned, taking
off his blindfold unable to speak.
“You’re supposed to SENSE oncoming danger. It’s part of the training for EVERY piñata
hitting pro,” I told him.
He stood up holding the baseball bat. “I’m gonna hit you!”
I
said: “You come near me with that
bat
and I will pound on your
head
until your brains turn to
mush,
and you’ll be a vegetable
that stares at the TV
like a couch potato
for the rest of your life…
Besides, I didn’t hurt you. It was the punching
bag. Take out your anger on it.”
Wendell suddenly began to swing the bat ferociously
at the punching bag as I cheered him on.
He spotted the piñata on the ground and went over
and beat it with the bat until he saw what was inside.
I said, “Haven’t you heard of rock candy? It looks like rocks, but it’s really
candy. Try one.”
He put a rock in his mouth and tried to bite into
it. “Ah!
It’s as hard as a rock!” he said spitting it into his hand.
I replied, “That’s why they call it rock
candy. It’s hard, but if you suck on it
long enough you will get to the candy filling in the middle.”
He put it back in his mouth. I wondered how long he would suck on the
rock.
Then I had an idea. I said, “Let’s see if the bag will hold your
weight.”
It worked.
Wendell and I took turns climbing up the tree and riding down the zip
line while bear-hugging the punching bag.
After about my fourth turn, our luck ran out. The line broke. I fell from pretty high up. If the punching bag wouldn’t have broken my
fall, I probably would’ve bit the dust. But
since I landed on the bag, I just had the wind knocked out of me. I guess it was my lucky day.
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Figurative Language
Devin tells Wendell, “You’ll be the star of every birthday party.” A star is a ball of burning gases in outer space, but Devin is using the word to mean “a popular person”. Devin will be a star if he hits a replica of the Earth. The rays from a star we call the sun hit the planet Earth every day.
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