Unfiltered Story #254297

My dad has a large scar on his back that kind of looks like a starburst. (The shape, not the candy – yes, I’ve had to clarify that before.). As a kid I was always curious about it, and finally one day I asked him how he got it.

As my dad told it, when he was a teenager in the 1960’s he went with a group of friends to a nearby beach for the weekend. They all carpooled down in one guy’s (Friend #1) car. They were cruising around, two guys in the front (Friends #1 & #2) with three guys (my dad, Friends #3 & #4)) in the back seat, with the windows down for an extra breeze. It just so happened that a group of guys from their rival high school were also there, and they pulled up alongside them on the road. These two high schools had that type of rivalry you see in the movies, lots of pranks and mascot tampering, but usually nothing too crazy.

The guy driving the other car decided to speed up and keep pace with them. Both groups shouted out the car windows and traded a few insults. But then, (Friend #2) in the front passenger seat got the bright idea to “scare” the rival school guys by lighting a cherry bomb and throwing it in the air above the other car.

(For those who don’t know, cherry bombs were small fireworks that were being banned in the US around this time due to safety concerns. To give you an idea of how strong they were, The Who’s drummer Keith Moon supposedly liked to throw these fireworks in hotel toilets and blow them up. I think there is still some version of the cherry bombs available today, but they’re not nearly as potent as the originals.)

So, (Friend #2) lights the cherry bomb and throws it out the window of a moving car. But, he didn’t throw it hard or high enough and the wind carried it right back into the open back seat window of their car – right behind my dad’s back. (Friends #3 & #4) tried to pull my dad away from it and toss it back out the window, but the cherry bomb went off.

My dad said he was actually pretty lucky, because it turned out that particular cherry bomb was kind of a dud, so he didn’t get hurt as badly as he might have been. Either way, dad got to spend his beach in the emergency room. (Friend #2) was really apologetic about the whole thing, and he had to pay to have the (Friend #1)’s car seat replaced.

The rival school guys thought the whole thing was so funny that the story got told for years, even after they all graduated.