I was young. I didn’t know any better.

I remember at one point in my life I thought being a stunt man would be a really really cool job. It was seriously near the top of my list of career choices in elementary school.

” RudieCantFail, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Stunt man… Where’s the brown play-doh?”

There was something quite appealing of risking your life for pure entertainment purposes that seemed bad ass. Part of my young brain thought people would be impressed by my dare devil acts of danger. Bruises. Bone breaking. Scars. They didn’t seem to phase me. At the same time, I had yet to succumb to some serious pain. But that didn’t stop my over-active imagination from wanting to become a stunt man in first grade.

How does a first grader decide a career move like that at a young age?

A simple answer was television. If you ever wondered if television influences the minds of young children? The answer is: yes.

My decision when I was in first grade to become a stunt man was due to one show and one show only. The Fall Guy. An 80’s action series show that I watched every week. My eyes glued to the tube and impressed as hell. It starred Lee Majors as Colt Seaver, a stunt man by day and bounty hunter by night. How fuckin cool did that just sound? Colt Seaver was the man. He would jump off moving trains. He would roll a car 100 times and get out with barely a scratch. He would be caught on fire while sipping martini’s. In the end he’d catch the bad guys and hit the hot tub. Sometimes with some chick for comfort. But Colt Seaver made danger look easy, fun, and bad ass. I wanted to be him.

And so for a few minutes, I was Colt Seaver.

When my parents weren’t looking I would perform my amazing stunts of 100% pure danger. I didn’t do anything that involved fire or speeding vehicles. Not yet at least. But I would do silly stunts like climb to the top of a book shelf and jump into the couch landing on my back. Or run full speed at the couch pretending it was a car and I was dodging it. Or jump from the couch as if a moving train landing with a dive roll to the floor. With imagination, the couch was anything and everything and my greatest tool for practicing my stunts.

But the couch can only take you so far.

One day my mom and I were coming home from the grocery store. We were riding in a green station wagon. The back was full of groceries and I was sitting in the back seat… plotting. I was plotting my first live stunt in front of an audience. The audience being my mom. The plan being the following:

As my mom is pulling into the concrete driveway of our house, I was going to kick the door open, jump out, and do a dive and roll into the front lawn. Then get up to my feet hands in the air, scratch free, and no broken bones.

That was the plan. The master plan.

I remember at the time I thought my mom would be hugely impressed with my magnificent dive and roll from a moving vehicle. Thus, she would then support me and my decision for stunt man school. That was the goal at least. To make a big impression. It was flawless, right? For a first grader, yes.

We were coming up to the driveway and she was pulling in slowly. That was when my moment began. I kicked open my door [years before child proof doors were invented and now you know why.] and I took a leap from the car. But then halfway through mid-air I freaked out. Something put the fear in me. I don’t know what it was but I second guessed my actions which does not help when doing something mid-air. As a result, I grabbed the car door and never let go of it. My mom didn’t realize what was going on and continued to pull into the drive way. She dragged my ass across the pavement of the driveway for about 10 feet. Then she stopped after she heard me yelling. Or was it more like crying? Anyway, she got out of the car and came to my aid. I had holes in my pants and scratched up knees that were bleeding. No broken bones tough.

My mom was not impressed. Nor did I go to stunt man school. I got a degree in computer science instead.

Tags: bounty hunter, Colt seaver, computer science, elementary school, first grade, Lee Majors, mom, play-doh, station wagon, stunt man, television, The Fall Guy