​I taught all my kids the Ballad of the Green Beret when they were young. Then just before I retired from the Army (2011) we were living in Thailand and we all took a dive trip to the Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea.

It was a magical day already because I had proposed to Sharon that morning and it was neat to see all my kids and her daughter expertly preparing their dive gear on their own on the back of the dive boat with a bunch of other divers from all over the world.

​The Ballad of the Green Beret came on over the dive boat speakers. Although others on the boat were familiar with the song, only my kids knew all the words and could sing along as we jumped into one of the best dive sites in the world.

​I am the oldest of four children. I was born in August 1960. My Irish Twin, David, was born a year later. David and I were incredibly curious and adventuresome. We shared a bedroom. In the bedroom were twin beds which could be stacked into bunk beds (and later in time, they were). There was also a chest of drawers and a playpen, which had served as a playpen/crib for me and for David. When Valerie was born in 1963, the playpen became her crib.
Shortly after Val was born there was one of our rare Alabama snow storms and it left about ten inches of snow on the ground. It must have been a weekend because my parents had slept in and David and I left our bedroom and checking out the living room window and seeing snow on the ground, we went out the front door in our jammies to play in the snow. That was where Mom and Dad found us when they got up. Val, still an infant was asleep in the playpen.
Later that day, Dad reversed the lock on our bedroom door and each night we were locked in so we could not escape out into the dangerous world until Mom and Dad were ready to watch us.
Locked in the room each night, we would wake up and find new and great adventures. One adventure I had with David was to figure out how to get to the top of the dresser. We figured out we could use the drawers as steps. Our plan had a fatal flaw however, and I can’t remember now what the initial logic of it was. We climbed in the bottom drawer, pulled out the next drawer, climbed into it, and for some reason, closed the drawer below. There were four drawers. So, four times we climbed to the next drawer and shut the drawer below behind us. We were so thrilled when we got to the top. We giggled and talked about how great it was and how small Valerie looked over in her playpen. After a while we calmed down and decided it was time to get down. We tried and tried but from our position on top of the dresser we could not pull the drawer out. We were stuck.
We contemplated several ideas. We decided it was too far to jump to the closest bed, and it was too far to jump to the floor. We looked over at Valerie. She was still pretty little at about eight months old and trapped inside the playpen, she couldn’t help. We had no choice, we had to call for help. After screaming for Mommy for about 20 minutes, she finally came in and rescued us.
Not long after that we decided Valerie would be honored to join us in our adventures. I have no idea how we got them or why they were in our bedroom, but David and I had somehow found a pair of pruning shears. We decided, in our three and two-year-old brains, that we needed to create an escape for Valerie from the playpen and help her get out into freedom. It took both of us to work the pruning shears, but we cut a decent size hole in the net wall of the playpen. Val didn’t seem quite capable of understanding that she was now free, so we climbed through the hole to aid in her escape. When David got in the whole bottom fell through. About that time, Mom and Dad came through the door. They were not quite as excited as we were about Valerie’s freedom.
A few weeks later, our regular baby sitter came to stay with us and shortly after Darryl came home from the hospital. Another new baby for us! Dad had been unable to fix the playpen well enough to put infant Darryl in it at that time. So, the new baby went into an emptied drawer from the dresser. That was really cool to the rest of us. Our new baby slept in a drawer.

In 1966 my Dad was stationed in Bangkok Thailand by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and we moved there in October of that year. I went into the first grade at International School Bangkok, Bankapi Campus. David was put into kindergarten around the corner from where we lived. This story takes place several years after we moved to Bangkok. By that time, we were living in an apartment complex called Sawan Court. Sawan Court consisted of three buildings at the time facing a swimming pool. There was parking under two of the buildings; the one where we lived, and the one opposite. Those two buildings had large three bedroom apartments. The third building, which faced out to the front fence, had three stories of studio apartments. About the third year we were living there, 1970, the owner decided to increase his wealth by filling in the swamp behind our building and putting up another five story set of apartments. Filling in the swamp required many, many trips by large dump trucks full of sand. They lined up down the street to take their turn at dumping their loads and creating a new property on which to build.
​As kids, we were nothing, if not innovating in finding new ways to have an adventure. At this time I was about 10, David would have been 9, Val was 7 and Darryl 6. I don't remember anymore whose idea it was, but we decided to jump onto the back of the dump trucks as they waited in line, hold on to upper back ledge as they dumped the sand into the swampy mess. Unlike in the US, there were no great OSHA laws in Thailand preventing people from doing stupid things, and even if there were, no low level Thai worker would ever stop a stupid American kid from doing... well, stupid stuff.
​There were probably seven or eight kids in on the adventure, to include the four of us Coffeys. I think the driver had decided to teach us a lesson, because it took longer than usual for the bed of the truck to reach full extension height and even though I was a skinny little runt, I was beginning to think I would not be able to hold on until the bed was all the way down again and was contemplating how much it would hurt to fall back into the sand and go out the bottom. I was just about to let go when I heard a scream. I looked over my shoulder to see my sister Val disappearing with the sand out the bottom of the tailgate. I decided I could hold on a little longer.
​We had to wait until the bed was all of the way down before we could climb down from the truck as it lumbered away before we could rush back to try and find Valerie in the pile of sand. We were crying and digging and wondering how big a spanking we would get if Val were dead. As anyone can imagine, we were no strangers to large group spankings.
​Then one of us found her head, and we dug frantically and faster. When we got her head cleared she began spitting out sand and crying. As we realized she was going to be fine and we were off the hook, we pulled her out, and then ran to catch another truck.

​By Carol Coffey, about sister Valerie