Back home in Minnesota, my family has a cabin on Mille Lacs lake that we go to for a few weeks each summer. It's an old log cabin, with only minimal commodities and few rooms. The only upstairs is two balconies above the main room, just big enough to hold a bed, and ringed by a wooden railing that keeps absent-minded children from falling off into the living room.
Now, after two weeks or so out in the country, my two younger brothers and I tended to get a little bored, and so we would invent creative and often dangerous pass times to keep ourselves amused. One of these "games" was a contest between my middle brother, Mark, and myself, to see who could fit their head into the small gaps between the railing posts. We would attempt smaller and smaller gaps, until we could no longer get our heads through, or were to scared to try. OK, so maybe it's not the funnest game in the world, but c'mon. We were young and we were bored.
My youngest brother, Alex, did not want to be left out of the fun. Unfortunately for Alex, though, he was a little lacking in common sense, and also fairly well, let us say, cranially endowed, so when he stuck his head between two particularly close-together rails, he became stuck. We didn't realize it at first, but as Alex became increasingly panicked to try and pull his head out, we saw him, paused, and did the only thing good older brothers could do - we laughed at him. But apparently he didn't think it was so funny, and when his cries grew long and loud enough that my mom finally came, we had to put our angelic faces back on. My mom wasn't as sympathetic as Alex would have liked, though.
"Alex, how the hell did you get in there? How come, if you got your head in, you can't get it out?"
"I don't know!!!"
"Maybe if we pulled on your legs really hard, you'll just pop out."
"NO!!! It hurts my ears!"
"Well, I don't know what else we can do, aside from sawing the bars off."
"Then do it!"
"I don't want to damage the cabin. Let's wait 'till your father gets here."
And so, for the next few hours, Alex knelt there, waiting. My mom went about her business, while Mark and I amused ourselves with offering candy to our hungry, helpless, brother, and then pulling it away. We thought it was funnier than he did. Finally, my father arrived, and came to the conclusion that somehow Alex's mellon had swelled in size, and indeed could not be pulled out. So after much griping and whining, my parents sawed the bar off, thankfully without injury to Alex. Then they made him put it back on - after all, this was all his fault in the first place. I said they should let him keep the bar and put it in a trophy case of something, but they weren't amused. At least he was free, and it turned out that he had won the head-bar contest. But at least he didn't get a big head about it. Oh god shoot me now.
