ROLY POLY BUGS AS AMMO

Do you all remember roly-poly bugs, from when you were a kid? And do you remember having dirt clod wars? And do you remember pop guns and/or cork guns? And how about when you found out that you could take your pop gun or cork gun and shove it in the mud and shoot mud balls at one another?

Well, I found out about better ammo than mud. I found out that you could shoot roly-poly bugs out of your pop gun AND that those little roly-poly bugs would shoot further than wet mud. The hard part was getting enough roly-polys to last through the fight. That and that the roly-polys didn't shoot very well unless they were rolled up.

When they hit you, you just had some roly-poly guts on you instead of a glob of mud. You’d wait for the innards to dry then just wipe them off. If you tried to wipe them off before they are dry? Well, then it smears and, from what Mom told me, it does not always come off of your clothes so well.

The next hard thing about roly-poly bugs, is finding a good way to carry them. Sandwich bags don't work too well. The bugs get all mushy. Jars are too hard to carry and too easy to break. I found that if I used an empty BB tube with the cap that I could carry almost 50 roly-polys.

The only problem was if the lid came off in your pocket. Have you ever stuck your hand in a pocket that is full of roly-poly bugs? They squish and leave a kind of smelly wet spot on and in your hip pocket. That was not good when Mom would go to clean out your pockets before doing laundry.

I swear, you could hear her scream from two blocks away. A friend asked me once if I heard a scream while we were at his house, which was two blocks from my house, and I told him I heard it, but didn't know why someone would be screaming during the day. Well, I found out why about ten minutes later when my friend’s mom said that there was a phone call for me from home.

Yep. It was Mom. And she was NOT a happy camper. I went home real fast. I mean, it's not like I had left them there on purpose. It, just kind of happened.

I learned how to do my own laundry that weekend. And Mom went to get her nails done. She ended up having to find a new nail salon. And I learned,to never wash a red t-shirt with your socks and underwear. Do you know how hard that is to explain to your buddies in the locker room?

I think I was the only kid in school,who went comando for awhile, until I could get some new shorts. And that was when I was in junior high in the late 60's early 70's. And you know. It's pretty cold going like that in the winter.