To end my freshman year on a good note, my good friends Jacob, Ryan, Layne, Junior, Tyler, Quinn, Becher, and I decided to throw a party at “Jacobs’ barn.”  This was a coliseum, the place everyone would go to be relaxed and sit back but also could be an all out brawl, on the other hand.  Jacob’s Barn was about the length of a basketball gym with half the barn floored with a wrestling mat, insuring nobody would get hurt too badly.  Above the wrestling mat was a hot orange basketball hoop that hung from the wall like a monkey from a tree.  We would spend hours seeing who could pull off the most prestigious dunks or who could splash in the most three pointers.  The other half of Jacob’s Barn was the so-called “relax room” where the ground was cement, and there was a flat screen along with a pool table to shoot around and then a few couches for when we wanted to hit the hay. Also had a storage room and boiler room.  The storage room was sort of the attic to the barn; it had all sorts of items like anything from spare pool sticks to left over chairs and tables.  The boiler room was nothing special with just what is needed to run the basics of any house or in this instance, a barn.  

One particular night when we had all arrived at the barn, we all settled down and ate some of the pizza that Ryan had picked up.  “Hot an’ ready” the box read as we all took a large slice and chowed down.  We chatted about the basketball or baseball games or the latest drama going on in our lives. 

The clock struck 9 o’clock, and we were off in Jacob’s olive golf cart, it had chromed wheels which had seemed to just catch one in an hallucination every time watched it drive by, we all huddled in it with the back being so heavy with three grown boys it seemed like it was holding on by a string.  We drove around for about an hour or so talking about old myths about old run down houses then headed back to the barn.  We started by all changing into our cut offs and shorts and taking off our shoes and grabbed basketball and to take practice shots.  We dunk the ball for so long we would start seeing blisters form on our hands from the fast action of the hand to the rim. 

The clock had struck about eleven o’clock with nobody having the intention to stop to take a rest.  We had all striped down to our underwear while Jacob demanded, “Jump!” as we all listened and dove into the crystal blue pond in the backyard to cool off then ran around to dry ourselves off.  Then it was back inside for some more action.  “Dude, let’s do something.  I’m bored,” Layne shuttered as we sat around drying off.  We all decided to set up some bases in each corner of the barn get out one of the bouncy balls lying in the attic to play some whiffle ball. 

We swung and ran, this eventually turned into more of a style of football with whoever was running trying to knock over the person with the ball so hard in hopes it would fly out of his hands with no intention of him getting back up and getting it.  Out of no where Junior had turned the lights.  When the lights went off in the barn, we all knew it was trouble.  The Barn would get as dark as a dungeon in the bottom of a castle, so when this happened, it was a complete riot.  Nobody knew where anybody was.  It became a game of hearing anyone could hear the slightest noise and begin to run away from it.  I gathered myself in the back right corned of the mats with hopes that nobody would be able to come up behind me.  I thought I heard a noise running up to my right and quickly dashed away from it hoping I had just escaped a basketball to my nose.  Instead I had run into a whiffle ball bat to the forehead, “Son of a gun,” I yelped as I held the spot I was hit, Junior then ran to somewhere unknown, laughing until he could not breathe. 

I eventually felt my way to the boiler room where there was a ladder to get up to the attic.  I successfully took it out of the boiler room and set it up to go up to the attic, and to my surprise Jacob had come out from somewhere behind me and ripped the ladder from underneath of me.  It felt like I jumped out of an airplane from 30,000 feet up.  I smacked my back and head right on those Matts and just sat there for about ten minutes.  When I had finally mustered the courage to get back up, it was no longer a game.  This was war.  I found a basketball in the corner of the room and used it as my attacking weapon anytime I would hear a footstep or a whisper or even a giggle, it would be high skys for that ball in hopes it would nail somebody.  This went on till the end of the night. 

When somebody finally turned on the light, it was like we all had just stared right into the rays of the sun.  We all relaxed, took one more dip into the pond to cool us all off, and then flipped the switch to the flat screen, sat back, and enjoyed the rest of the night at “The Barn.”