Blogger's Note: I'll be busy next week. Holiday plans and a heavy work schedule will have me running rampant. The only day I have scheduled off is Christmas Eve, so our yuletide festivities will be then. I don't foresee having any free time to write; which is unfortunate because I have a shipment of memories I need to unload. I figure I'll pull a late night and get this story out of my head.
I started brainstorming for my next Flashback episode right after I finished "Another Dimension", and I tentatively came up with the idea for this one. I just wasn't for sure if I should share it. I'm not especially proud of the events that I'll be writing about, and I wasn't sure if I should include some of my collaborators. In fact, I sent a message to my long time friend Brad to ask him if it was ok if I told this story. "Yeah, go for it. It's funny in hindsight. We sure were some scared little shits when that deputy showed up though," was his reply. I'd have to agree.
In 1986, my mother had a house built just walking distance from Unity Elementary School in rural Brookport, IL. Today's story takes place a couple of years later, in 1988. The neighborhood was filled with other boys my age, and we rarely complained about having nothing to do.
I was worried when I started piecing this story together. My brother and I had a discussion not long ago that we thought that our fellow neighbors and classmates' parents viewed us as "hoodlums" when we lived by Unity. Shawn and I were always running around the neighborhood. Our single mother didn't want to share the house with two rowdy, adolescent boys; so, often, she would tell us to scram. Our radius for adventure was as far as we could walk, and we could walk far. But we were good kids. We really were. I think we were misunderstood. We didn't lie, cheat, or steal. We didn't hang around people that did. But we were ripe for a little mischief sometimes.
Tonight, I'm going to step into the confessional and tell you of my twelve-year old sins. Perhaps, after it's all out, you can forgive me and my friends. We didn't mean any harm. We were just trying to have fun. If not for the vomit, the man that hung himself, and the locker room panties, no one would've been hurt. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's 1988, and the glorious days of land-line phones made prank calls a common occurrence.
Let's start at the beginning. My brother and I were hanging out next door at Brad and Kyle's house. The night was still young, and their mom was at school that night...
"What?"
"I said, 'This is Bethany! Can I help you??'"
"What?"
"Sir! This is Bethany! You called 1-800-EAR-WELL! Can I help you??"
"What?" I had to move the phone away from my mouth to let out a laugh that was about to disturb my "old man" voice. Shawn and Kyle had their mouths covered, but coughs of laughter still escaped occasionally.
"Sir, maybe you should get someone else on the phone so we can help you!"
"What?" I couldn't take it anymore. I had to tag out. I handed the phone to Kyle who knew what to do. I tripped over the phone cord as I attempted to sprint out of the room to release a guffaw of hilarity. My stumble nearly pulled the phone from Kyle's grasp and created a bout of premature snickering that nearly cost us a flawlessly hilarious prank call.
1-800-EAR-WELL was the number we had called. Frequent commercials on channel 23 promised hearing impaired people an exceptional solution for their disability if only they'd "just pick up the phone and call now. Operators are standing by."
"Sir! Could you please put someone else on the phone!"
"What?" Kyle's "old man" voice sounded different from mine, but it wasn't half-bad. A few dramatic seconds passed before we'd find out if "Bethany" was going to buy it.
"Sir.. Please get someone else to call us back! I'm sorry, but it doesn't appear that I can help you."
Oh, this was delicious! Unfortunately, though, we would have to change our tactic for "Bethany" was about to hang up. Kyle shrugged at me as if to ask 'what should I do.' I shrugged back; I was out of ideas.
Shawn grabbed the phone from Kyle and saved us from any more deliberating. "Show us your tits!" my ten-year-old brother screamed into the phone. And that was it. We were all on the floor rolling and laughing. What a splendid way to punctuate one of the best prank calls we had ever perpetrated!
"What're you all doing?" Brad stepped into the room wearing a curious smirk. "Did you guys call 1-800-EAR-WELL again??"
Now we were really laughing which was affirmation to his question. Brad had been in his room playing his electric guitar. He was the most musically talented person I've ever known. He played guitar, piano, trumpet, trombone, and saxophone and anything else that caught his fancy. He'd been teaching me how to play some chords on the piano lately so that I could accompany some of his guitar solos. We were actually starting to sound halfway decent together.
"Let's go shoot some hoops," Brad suggested.
Brad and Kyle lived right next to Unity Elementary School, so a basketball court was just a short stroll away. I sucked at basketball, but the idea of going outside sounded appealing. The night was warm and electric. "Let's go," I acceded.
The four of us ran downstairs, threw on our shoes, and walked in front of the school on our way to the "kiddie" court. Of the two courts on the school grounds, we preferred the one near the playground where the little kids played; a couple of short basketball goals made it possible for us to dunk there. On the way, we passed the new, brick sign that had just been put in earlier that day. In limestone 'UNITY SCHOOL LIONS' had been etched beside the likeness of a lion's head. A small mound of fresh dirt was piled beside it from where the hole had just been dug earlier that day.
As we approached the court, Brad took off at a sprint and dunked impressively on the shorter goal. We all ran after him, eager to get our turns with the ball.
"You guys are assholes."
We looked up, and Tim was approaching us from the direction of his house. He was another one of the neighborhood boys.
We were trying hard not to laugh. We knew what he was talking about.
"My mom was pissed," he continued.
None of us wanted to admit to anything, so we just kept our mouths shut. Last night, during another splendid round of prank phone calls, we had gotten the grand idea of calling the local cab service and having a taxi sent to Tim's house at three in the morning.
"It sat out there blowing its horn for fifteen minutes!" Tim wasn't going to drop it.
Kyle finally broke. Once he snickered, we all just lost it. Tim, fed up with our unsympathetic attitudes, turned around and strode back home. "Fuck you guys!" He was royally pissed!
The four of us stood on the court, laughing and trying to regain our composure. "Hey, Shawn. Throw up!" Kyle suggested.
My brother bent over and vomited.
We roared with laughter. Nothing, and I mean nothing, in the whole, wide world is as funny to a group of adolescent boys as the magnificent hilarity of random regurgitation. I was proud to have a brother with the uncanny ability to throw-up on command. Now, keep in mind, we had to play this card being mindful that he couldn't throw up all night long. Hell, no one has that much food in their stomach. Once or twice was the maximum times Shawn was capable of "firing", so employing a degree of arbitrary timing could escalate a nice chuckle into a thunderous clamor of merriment. Shawn and Kyle had just federated an exquisitely timed bout of random puke.
I didn't think I'd ever recover from laughing so hard. I was breathless and wonderfully dizzy. Tonight couldn't get any better. We all sat on the asphalt and tried to regain our composure.
After we did, I was the first to start conversation. "You know what I heard? I heard that someone fell for our hanging man prank."
I was referring to the empty house over on Pell Cemetery Road. A couple of nights ago we had succeeded in our mission of breaking in and hanging a scarecrow in the second story window. Using a pair of pants I had supplied and one of Brad's shirts, we had created a "man" that we had stuffed with straw and strung up to appear to be a "suicide" victim. We gained entry via an unlocked, second-story window that we had to climb to reach.
Brad, Kyle, and Shawn all waited for me to continue. "Yeah. At church, this girl I know, said that one of her friends was driving by and thought she saw a man 'hanging' in the window. She called the cops who came, and I guess they figured out it was a scarecrow."
We all reverted into some more chuckling, but this time it wasn't quite as difficult to achieve some self-control. A span of quiet time elapsed as we all imagined a squad of worried policemen clamoring their way up the steps of the abandoned house en route to encounter the "dead man".
Kyle broke the silence. "Hey, Shawn! Throw up on that new sign!"
We all looked to see what Shawn's reaction would be to what was obviously a terrific idea. He cockily shrugged, stood, and clapped his hands to free the grime from his palms. We followed suit, anxious to see Mr. Kettler's pride and joy covered in puke.
Mr. Kettler was the school principal. Few people in my life have I disliked more than this man. He was an adult bully as well as my arch-nemesis. Throwing up on the new sign wouldn't be a sign of disrespect to the school; hell, we liked the school. It would be a symbolic gesture of our feelings toward Mr. Dipshit Kettler.
Arriving at the new sign, we gathered around my younger brother. Around us, intermittent fireflies speckled throughout the vigorous night and danced to an orchestra of chirping crickets. Shawn's jeans were rolled up just above his ankles, and his sleeveless shirt appeared in need of a good washing. Wasting no time, he spewed all over the new sign. The youngest member of our posse wiped a strand of vomit from his lip like a champ. We marveled over the vandal's artwork with conniving grins. Hopefully, Mr. Kettler would see it before a good rain washed it away.
As the excitement of our newest endeavor began to fade, our conversation began to migrate into penis size claims and condom discomfort. By thirteen, we had all tried on rubbers by now, so each of us had some input on the matter. We all agreed that they were too small for our packages which was a real shame. Trojan was voted the best brand, and I didn't dare to admit that it was the only brand that I had managed to sample. Ultimately, French ticklers won out as the best possible choice if the need for protection ever arose; we conceded that since they were "ribbed for her pleasure" that they would be the most considerate choice. I fantasized about a girl being so ecstatically "pleasured" by the brilliant contraceptive that gleeful screams of lusty gratification would accompany her rapturous amazement. In such an instance, I would try my best to act modest because, well, let's face it, who likes a cocky jerk?
"Did you hear me?" Brad's hand waving in front of my face snapped me out of the dream. "I said, 'let's go play basketball again.'"
"Yeah.. uh. sure..." I articulated.
The underfoot chat crackled beneath our tennis shoes and echoed off the gymnasium as we meandered back to the playground side of the school. My thoughts strayed to the night we discovered that the rear door by the music room could be opened by jiggling the handle and pulling at the same time. We had all stared at each other in disbelief and traded dares on who would go inside.
Kyle had finally come up with a compromise. He said he would run into the school, down the hallway, across the basketball court, and out the gym door if we'd do it, too. The gym door had one of those push bar mechanisms on the inside so that one could exit by simply depressing it and pushing the door open.
And that's how it all had started.
Kyle did as he said he would. I agreed to go next. The hollow reverberation of my footfalls echoing down the empty hallway roused my thrill-seeking spirit and counterbalanced my fear of being caught. When I came out into the night air that first time, I was fueled with adrenalin and a stimulated sense of adventure. Brad and Shawn followed shortly after, and the plunge into breaking and entering had begun.
Only we didn't do it for any criminal reasons. We had no desire to take anything; we didn't even have any desire to vandalize anything. We simply enjoyed the thrill of getting away with something we shouldn't be doing.
Our "dares" matured and eventually became unnecessary. After a couple of weeks, we were just walking right in and going for a stroll. We'd explore the classrooms while they were dark and unfamiliar. We'd play basketball inside the gym. We'd scout places that we had never seen before like the girls' bathroom or the kitchen.
Once, we got the clever idea of taking a milk and leaving fifteen cents, the amount we were charged at school for an extra milk, on top of the cooler where they were kept. I giddily imagined the dialogue that might have been exchanged by the cooks the next morning.
"Doris, you ain't gonna believe this!"
"What's wrong, Cindy? You look like you just saw a ghost!"
"I just did the milk inventory for the morning. The chocolate milk checks out just fine. But, the white milk... well.. the white milk is off..."
"What do you mean Cindy? What's wrong??"
"I counted the white milk last night, and I know I counted it right. There were exactly 117 white milks when we left last night! But now there's 116!"
"Cindy, white milk can't just sprout wings and fly away! You must've miscounted; that's all..."
"That's not all, Doris. There's something else..."
"What is it Cindy? Just say it dammit! What's wrong??"
"There was exactly fifteen cents on top of the cooler this morning..."
...
"Cindy... that's.. that's.. crazy. How can.. "
"Fifteen cents, Doris! The exact cost of a carton of milk!"
"Cindy. Listen to me. I want you to put that money in the till. That'll make the inventory right again. And..."
"And what, Doris? AND WHAT!?!?!"
"...and don't ever tell anyone about this, you hear me? No one! Not a soul."
"I'm scared Doris. I'm scared."
"Me too, Cindy. Just get to work and try not to think about it. We've got a lot of applesauce to spoon out today. Just try not to think about it.. and never tell anyone. Ever."
But all that fun and excitement was over now. Someone had fixed the door handle a few days ago. All the countless thrills and potential pranks halted by a simple door handle. The fun was over.
We could have pulled off so many clever jokes; we had access to the whole school. Hell, we could have even gone into the girls' locker room and...
"Hey!" I exclaimed as we arrived at the basketball court. Brad, Kyle, and Shawn turned in unison at my sudden and unexpected utterance.
"I know what we should have done while we could get inside the school," I said. "We should have gone into the girls' locker room, found a pair of panties, and put it in some dweeb's locker in the boys' locker room!"
My three associates looked at me with smirks of approval. "Rad!" Brad proclaimed.
The appealing revelation was short-lived once the realization that we could no longer get inside dawned on us. One by one, our smiles began to fade. We just stood there no longer interested in basketball.
"I know how we can get inside," Brad offered. We looked at him with anxious eyes, searching for a clue to his epiphany. He shrugged and continued, "the skylight."
"The skylight?" I inquired.
"Sure, the skylight over the fifth and sixth grade classrooms," Brad maintained.
I didn't start at Unity until the seventh grade, which was on the opposite end of the building from the fifth and sixth grade classrooms. I had no idea about these "skylights" of which he spoke, but I trusted his judgement. The idea sounded promising. Getting on top of the school was child's play. Between the music room and the boiler room, a narrow passage allowed one to climb onto a window sill and then crawl under the overhang to pull oneself on top of the music room. One could leap from there to the main building, but not much was up there. Once you'd accomplished the feat, you really didn't have a desire to do it again. But, if we could gain access via this "skylight" to the inside, we could pull off one of the greatest pranks we'd ever imagined!
We didn't hesitate and dispatched ourselves to the skylight above the fifth grade classroom in no time at all. It was a square box covered by a bubbled piece of clear, hard plastic; and, it was attached to the roof by a handful of screws. Brad had run home to get a couple of screwdrivers. He promptly returned and tossed Shawn one of the tools upon his arrival. Methodically, the two went to work removing screws from opposite sides. Anxious for the access to be completed, Kyle and I were cackling deviously.
"Ok," Brad explained. "Once these screws come out, the skylight is gonna be free to fall. Kyle you grab one side; Duane, you grab the..."
A loud CRASH boomed into the night air and suppressed the final words of Brad's instructions. The skylight had broken free more quickly than expected and had fallen into the classroom below us. We each claimed a side and peered into the opening. A square moonbeam spotlighted just enough to ascertain that the plastic skylight was now busted and a good twelve feet below us.
"Oh, shit," Brad muttered.
Our glee and excitement disappeared immediately. Pensive moonlight partially illuminated our faces as we exchanged stares of dire finality. We were fucked.
"What now?" Shawn broke the silence with the obvious question.
"We have to get it," Brad surmised.
"That's a long drop," I perceived. "Who's gonna do it?"
Shawn was obviously too small; so, Brad, Kyle, and I exchanged looks. I was wearing my good pair of jams and didn't want to get them any dirtier than they already were. Fortunately, Kyle offered, "I'll do it."
Relieved, all of us turned to look at the brave eleven-year-old. He climbed into the now-open hole in the roof and hung by his hands. Dangling above the chaos of shattered skylight, Kyle dropped into obscurity. I was concerned for him. Landing would be difficult in the dark amid the broken pieces of skylight and the rows of desks. We couldn't see him, so the sounds of splintering wood and crackling plastic worried us.
"You ok?" I called down to him.
"Yeah!" he called back as the report of an overturned chair punctuated his response.
"Go around and open the door for us," Brad instructed.
Brad, Shawn, and I climbed down from the roof to find Kyle already there holding the rear door open. We didn't dally and headed straight to the classroom where the catastrophic evidence of our misfortune was waiting.
We stood in a semicircle just inside the doorway of the classroom and silently appraised the damage. The skylight was laying against an overturned desk, and a portion of the plastic was clearly broken beyond repair. Toppled chairs and splintered wood scattered across the floor dissolved any hopes of covering up this debacle. My heart sank into oblivion, and we just stood there with our mouths agape.
"What now?" I was the first to speak. For a brief moment, I didn't think anyone was going to respond. Suddenly, Brad geared into action.
"Kyle, go find a broom. Shawn, start picking up the desks and chairs. Straighten them up as best you can; try and get them to look like they would have before this happened." Brad's directions were welcomed. No one questioned him or second-guessed him. "Duane, help me pick up the skylight."
Brad grabbed one end; I grabbed the other. Together we lifted the heavy object and began carrying it out of the classroom and into the hallway. "What're we gonna do with it?" I asked.
Brad shrugged and looked at me. "I don't know. Any ideas?" he grimaced the question.
"Not really..." I began. "Well, we can't repair it; it's too broken to put it back. I guess we should hide it; I don't know what else to do..."
Brad nodded agreement. "Where should we take it?"
"In the field behind the school?" I suggested.
He nodded; so, we began the long, cumbersome walk to "the field behind the school."
After what miserably felt like hours, the four of us had reconvened back in the classroom. The room itself was more or less back in its original shape. The big, gaping hole overhead, however, was pretty noticeable. "What're we gonna say if we get asked if we know anything about it?" Shawn asked the obvious question.
"We have to swear we don't know anything about it," I dictated. Everyone nodded agreement.
We scanned the room one last time, decided everything was as good as we could get it, and lumbered to the exit where the door was propped open with a mop. The sound of the door slamming shut sounded a little too much like the clap of a gavel. No one was smiling as we dispersed and headed to our separate homes with demoralized spirits and forlorn expectations. Sleep wouldn't come easily for any of us that night.
Brad and I were in the same class, and, as the first bell rang to start the day, we exchanged a hopeful glance of camaraderie. A soul-shattering voice quickly came over the loudspeaker and doused any hopes we might have had. "Could you please send Brad and Duane to the principal's office?"
We started the long walk to the principal's office which was conveniently located right beside the fifth grade classroom. We didn't say anything while we strode down the hallway, especially after we saw the police car sitting in front of the school. My heart was about to beat out of my chest.
In the office, Shawn and Kyle were already there. A deputy sheriff, the school secretary, Mr. Kettler, and a familiar scarecrow were also there.
"Have a seat," Mr. Kettler instructed us with that dire expression he always wore. For the first and only time in my life, his expression was actually justified. Brad and I took a seat next to our brothers.
The deputy was leaning against a filing cabinet with his arms crossed. "There was a break-in last night," our personality-lacking principal began. "Would any of you know anything about that?"
Each of us had the word GUILTY tattooed across our foreheads. For a moment, no one spoke. Finally we nodded. I could hardly speak, much less assert my innocence. Everyone else appeared to be in the same shape.
"We already know what happened," Mr. Kettler began. "We just want to hear it from you."
Bullshit! I wanted to say. He didn't know what happened. He was trying to play that 'we already know' card which sickened me, because he was about to get a confession anyway. I hated that jackass.
Mr. Kettler, with his pressed suit and dweeb haircut, decided he would rest his stare on me, his arch-nemesis. I looked around at my fellow companions. Shawn and Kyle slightly nodded encouragement, as if to say, 'go ahead.'
"We accidentally broke the skylight last night as we tried to get inside the school," I confessed without looking up.
"Why were you trying to get inside the school?" Principal Dipshit asked.
"Just to see if we could. We weren't going to take anything or hurt anything," I continued. Brad, Shawn, and Kyle nodded their agreement. Why wasn't the deputy asking these questions? I hated this son of a bitch.
"Do you know anything about this scarecrow?" Kettler interrogated.
We all nodded. "We made it as a joke to scare people and hung it in the empty, brick house on Pell Cemetery Road," I explained.
"...and you broke a gutter getting inside Mr. Moler's house," Mr. Kettler finished for me. We all looked at each other with inquisitive expressions. None of us knew anything about that, but none of us dared dispute anything at this point. "Where is the skylight?" Mr. Kettler continued.
"We hid it in the field behind the school," I disclosed.
Mr. Kettler looked at the deputy as if to say, 'see there? I knew it.' The police officer's face was unreadable.
"And now, for the biggest question," our principal slammed his fist on the desk to emphasize the gravity of what he was about to ask. "What did you do to our new sign??"
For a moment we all just kept our heads down. We couldn't believe that a little bit of throw-up, which had surely evaporated away overnight, would cause this level of outrage. Of all the damage and turmoil that we had accomplished last night, I had nearly forgotten about the sign. It seemed so trivial in comparison to everything else.
Shawn meekly began raising his hand. We all turned to look at my younger brother as he softly and somberly explained, "I threw up on it..."
The deputy sheriff's chest shook from a muted snicker. The secretary, who had been busy working on some paperwork, giggled. Kyle outright laughed.
"IT"S NOT FUNNY!!!" Mr. Kettler shouted as he again slammed his fist into his desk. Everyone hushed. "Do you know what's in vomit? Or do you not pay attention to your lessons? Hydrochloric acid! And it ate away the limestone of our brand new sign! Now there's a big, ugly blotch on one side!!!" He paused and stood. His face was redder than I had ever seen it before, and I had seen it pretty red. "The first graders worked hard at bake sales and selling raffle tickets to raise enough money for that sign! What am I supposed to tell them? Do you want to tell them??"
None of us spoke; we just kept our heads down. I pictured a young boy wearing an Alf tee-shirt and holding a plate of brownies staring at Shawn's puke blotch and crying big, sad tears.
The deputy finally straightened and spoke up. "You boys need to show me where you hid the skylight. Come with me." We stood and followed him to his squad car outside. When he opened the back door, my heart started pounding. Were we going to jail?
The four of us piled into the backseat, and the officer closed the door. He walked around and climbed into the driver's seat. "Ok, where is it?" he asked.
"Go around by the playground, and there's a little, gravel road that goes back into the field," I answered. The police officer drove to the side access road slowly. As luck would have it, recess had just started. The whole school was gathered at the playground right beside us. The kids all stopped playing and stared at the delinquent boys in the backseat of a police car. Brad, Shawn, and I hung our heads; I wanted to be invisible right then. Kyle started waving.
Brad elbowed him. "Stop it!" he insisted. Kyle started laughing From my vantage point in the backseat, I could see the deputy's mouth in the rear view mirror; he was smiling. I don't think I was supposed to see that smile; but, for the first time that day, I felt a glimmer of hope. We just might make it home alive.
After we arrived at the spot that Brad and I had hidden the skylight, the officer let us out. We helped him load it into the trunk of the car; then, he drove us back to the school.
We all reassembled in the principal's office. Mr. Kettler started to speak, but the deputy interrupted him. "I've got to get out of here. I've already talked to your parents. They're gonna split the cost for repairing the skylight and the gutter at Mr. Moler's house; we'll have to see about supplying them estimates. I guess your mom," he paused to point at Shawn, "will be responsible for paying to have the sign fixed. Since the damage was minimal, charges aren't going to be pressed. We're going to leave punishment up to the school system and Mr. Kettler here. And, I promise you boys, you do not want to see me again. Do you hear me?"
We all emphatically nodded, eager to be as far away from the law enforcement officer as possible.
"Good. Well, I'm out of here. By the sound of it, your parents are going to be doing more to you than I ever could. Good luck, fellas." He tipped his hat and stepped out of the office. We were left at the mercy of the dastardly Mr. Kettler.
He had his head down, working on some papers. When he looked up, I could see that the angry expression on his face didn't match the satisfied contentment in his eyes. We were at his mercy.
"We're suspending all of you for five days," he began. "You'll be receiving straight zeroes on any schoolwork due during that time. For those of you that care about your grades, you should be very upset. I don't see how that won't drastically affect your report card. Also, this will be going on your Permanent Record." He busied himself with the papers on his desk as if he were filing our Permanent Record right then and there.
Of all the bad news that we had gotten that day, I found the blemish on my Permanent Record to be the most disheartening.
"Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the man you just elected. I proudly introduce the newest President of the United States of America: Mr. Harold Duane Ed... What's that? I'm sorry folks; I'm getting something from Central Control. This can't be! Oh my God!! How could he??? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very sorry to inform you that Mr. Edwards is not eligible to be the President. Apparently, back in 1988, he broke into a school. It's on his PERMANENT RECORD!"
I felt sick. But then, I stopped to consider what was going on my brother's Permanent Record: Threw Up on School Sign. I spared him a sympathetic glance; he would probably never even be able to get a job. I vowed to let him live with me when we grew up; I mean I did have some responsibility for the whole ordeal. He could stay with me so long as he understood that the television was mine during Saturday Night's Main Event and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. I might even let him have the TV during his precious Star Trek as long as he helped me trim the hedge maze in the backyard.
"Well, I've called your parents. They're on their way to pick you up. I suppose there's nothing more I can do; I'm sure you'll really be regretting your actions after your parents are finished with you. And you can take that," he pointed to the scarecrow, "with you when you go." Mr. Kettler sat smugly in his desk chair gauging our reactions.
And we sat there. Reflecting on bad decisions, our parents' ire, the future, the cost of the damages, and tits (at that age, we were always thinking of tits). The next week was pretty ugly for all of us. We were grounded for a month and had to work off the cost of the repairs. Life was miserable, but it continued. We learned a lot about respect, and the value of money that year. We'd never pull a stunt quite like that again.
But, we had never meant to hurt anything that night. We didn't realize we had broken a gutter at Mr. Moler's house; we hadn't meant to break the skylight; and, we never stopped to think that throw-up would eat away limestone.
You know, after our parents paid for the costs of repairs, Mr. Kettler never did have his beloved sign fixed. Evidence of that night is still blotched on it to this day. Sometimes, when I drive by it, I see it and reflect on that night. Of all the people I've known in my life, few people exemplify respect and responsibility as do Shawn, Brad, and Kyle. And, I like to think I'm not half-bad myself. Some of life's lessons must have soaked in after all, despite what Kettler might have thought back then.
And where are they now? Well, I'm still not the President of the United States of America; Shawn ended up landing a job despite the blemish on his Permanent Record; and Cindy and Doris have still, to this day, never told anybody about the missing milk.
And Mr. Kettler is still a dweeb.
-- if you'd like to read another Flashback episode, then check out "Tales of the Unexplained"
2 comments:
Thank you for filling in the details! I remember when all this happened.
Tits
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