I was 7 or 8 years old as I remember. My mother gave me some money and a note. She said "run up to the 7-11 and get me some cigarettes!" I didn't mind, it got me out of the house and I had 15 cents I had saved to buy some penny candy. I went out to our backyard to get my bike and someone had taken the rear tire and rim off it. My older brothers had a bad habit of helping themselves to my stuff! All I could find was another front tire in the heap of bike parts in the back yard. I did not want to walk all the way to the store and back. The trek to the store was up hill 1/2 way and down 1/2 way so I could coast down the hills, right? I bolted the front tire to the rear of my bike and set out. Smart? I pushed the bike up the hill then road it down the hill to the store. Being an older bike it had no front brakes and relied on the standard back brakes engaged by pressing backwards on the peddles to stop. With no brakes I used my shoe, well a rubber soled sneaker that is. I would simply shove my sneaker in the space between the top of the front fork and the front tire. I could control the speed by the amount of pressure I put on the tire. This seemed to work pretty good as long as I was going straight and not to fast. Smart huh? For a young boy, I was pretty good on a bike, not like the attention starved over-achievers of today but I could skid, jump, slide, bunny hop and fly with the best of them and I was smart! So there I was, small paper bag wrapped over the handle bar grip coming down the paved parking lot hill of the large apartment complex built behind our neighborhood, wind in my hair, bunny hopping speed bumps and "S" curving to control speed along with my shoe brake and all hopped up on penny candy. Small problem with my braking system though, if I pushed to hard or to long my shoe would heat up and start burning the bottom of my foot. I compensated this by watching my speed. Smart! I've taken this way home a hundred times so I had it all planned out, where to turn, where to slide, jump etc... Then it happened, I was coming around the corner were the hill got steep and a car came from nowhere cutting me off and straight down the big steep hill I went. I panicked. I shoved my foot hard into the wheel burning a hole right through the sole to my foot! Pulling my foot out of harms way my speed increased dramatically. My brain mapped out the coarse in front of me, curbs and sewer drains guard a 6 to 8 foot drop off to fenced back yards. On the other side we have parked cars and to the front was a sharp curve giving way to a 10 to 12 foot cliff and the back of a house. I slip deeper into my panicked state. Hopping the last speed bump I turned the bike to the right then kicked it to the left and laid it down on the blacktop. Let The Road Rash Begin! I left a flesh trail for about 10 feet until my bike jammed into a storm drain rag dolling me over to my left side. I kissed the concrete top cartwheeling through the air in a 8 foot free fall, clearing the chain link fence, thank goodness, and into a grassy backyard. I laid their for what seemed like forever, stunned and bleeding. I heard off to the rear, by the house, a growl. I looked over to see a large black Rottweiler about 30 feet from me and hell bent to welcome me to his home. I couldn't move. My body refused. My brain was on fire with pain! Oh Yeah, the dog! I sprang to my feet and dove back over the fence just out of reach only to be met by the thorny blackberry vines growing on the hillside. I was a mess but I was alive. I could not find my Mother's smokes! She is going to kill me.