I'm Glad My Daddy Drives a Polaris

I read this article about the Yamaha Rhino which is now being blamed for 30 deaths. The goofy-looking ATV is facing over 200 lawsuits, mostly alleging an unsafe design.

My gentleman-farmer father and knitting-fiend mother both have Polaris ATVs. They're used as "farm tools" (they really do have legitimate farm uses) and we have taken my dad's down to the Shipman Family Reunion at the farm every Thanksgiving for the past several years. They're really handy for navigating the "mud pond" and are also useful for fast fleeing in case the crazy estranged relatives decide to try to kill us.

As kids, we didn't have any four-wheelers. I always wanted one, or a go-cart. One day we were playing in the yard and my dad told us to get in the car so we could go by a coworker's house. We complained and moaned about it. We were such brats! Once we got there, we quickly realized that we were at this guy's house in order to pick up an old golf cart that my dad had bought for us. Thankfully, he didn't change his mind and decide not to buy it after all of our whining and we came home with our very own electric play cart.

That cart was so much fun! It was electric, so you couldn't drive it all day long, or else we would've never come inside. Our 2-acre yard wasn't nearly big enough for its potential, but we still had a lot of fun. I ran into a lot of stuff with it. I put a decent dent in one of the garage doors, pinged a fence post, and probably hit several other things all over the yard. It was probably a good learning experience before I got a real license.

One day, Amanda and I got tired of Amy hogging it and concocted the stupidest plan ever to stop her - we're lucky we didn't kill our baby sister when we stretched out our homemade rope in front of her moving vehicle as a sort of "trip line". (Charlie, don't think Amanda's kidding when she says she's going to get you jogging by her house!)