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Tell us what happened. HT @twoodwar

The door was closed, yet I just had to open it to see what’s behind it.
I shouldn’t have done that … it was a bad idea …

Oh, all the time he would do it. We would be walking along and he would say, “Hey, look! It’s a traffic cone. It could be a hat.” Then he would put it on his head and walk around like some kind of orange-hatted Abraham Lincoln.
And I would tell him, “Hey, be careful! That could be dangerous.” But he never did listen.
Then there was the one time and he said all that stuff and did it and we were walking along and he didn’t see the hole, and then afterwards there it was. Just the traffic cone just sitting there beside the hole and then he was gone.  And I didn’t have any rope. That was just the way it was. And I never saw him or talked to him again.

You hear it all the time, but you never think things like that are actually true. Well, I’m here to tell you that this warning is definitely worth paying attention to.
“Your face will freeze that way, you know.”
Grandpa was full of these wives tales. I’d heard enough to know that most of these weren’t really anything of major concern. I knew them all – potatoes weren’t going to grow out of my ears, watermelon vines wouldn’t come erupting out of my gut, and my nose hairs wouldn’t begin growing at an alarming rate any more than my face would spontaneously freeze into an awful sneer.
Strangely enough, Grandpa was always serious about one warning in particular: don’t get in the water until 30 minutes after eating.
Surely, this warning fell into the lot with the others. He never talked about what would happen if I got into the water before 30 minutes was up, but I was always just afraid enough to try. Sometimes, I’d teeter on the edge of the pool at 29 minutes, but wimp out, and wait that one extra 60 seconds before jumping in. I decided that this summer would be the summer when I didn’t wait 30 minutes.
—
We were heading to the beach one afternoon and I had made up my mind to get into the water before the 30 minute limit had expired. When we arrived, I went for it. I ate everything I could before even getting in once. I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess anything up by getting in too soon. (I’m not sure, in retrospect, what would have messed up, but whatever). 
And then I started the clock.
“Make sure you wait 30 minutes,” mom said. I waved and trotted down to the water line.
“This is it,” I mumbled out loud.
Slowly, gingerly, I raised my right foot and splashed it down into the surf.
Nothing happened.
I realized I was holding my breath. I slowly let it out with a little smirk and took another step.
Still nothing.
“I knew it,” I said to no one in particular.
That’s when the sand opened up beneath me and I started sinking.
I was falling! I couldn’t stop! It was the worst quicksand I’d never imagined. My legs were held fast by the wet sand and I could feel the water working its way up my legs, past my knees to my waist.
“Help! Help!” I yelled. No one seemed to notice me sinking!
I thrashed around, kicking, waving my arms…nothing could stop me from sinking deeper and deeper into the warm, wet sand.
—
I woke up on the floor, tangled in my blankets and wet from the waist down. My brother was tangled up on the floor with me with an empty bowl. His friend Dave was in the door looking like he didn’t know whether to laugh or to run.
It turns out that my brother and his little buddy wanted to test the hand-in-warm-water trick to see if it works.
Well, apparently it does.
I wasn’t swallowed up by the lake for getting in too early. I wasn’t dying. I was peeing.
That being said, the dream was…memorable. I don’t think I’ll be hopping into the lake before 30 minutes is up any time soon.

And I did. I went down random holes. I followed my nose. I trod forgotten realms with bared toes.
It led me ever deeper. I fit in less and less. The avarice and artifice glittered only with bitterness.
Holes I sought and holes I found until the only place I fit was underground. I scrawled one final bit of graffiti and pulled the cone over top of me.

Those were his last famous words …