Summer Fun

Ahh yes, school is out and the youth of America have gone wild. All is right in the world. But isn’t that what you are supposed to do when you are out of school for the summer?

I remember one summer when I lived in Tampa that I am surprised I lived thorough it. Not that I did anything all that dangerous (well not that relates to this story) but that I just did stupid shit. If being a moron wasn’t going to kill me, the punishment from my parents or my friend’s parents should have!

It was one of those nights where everyone told their parents they were spending the night at someone else’s house and we went out to pretty much be a menace to society. We didn’t do anything “all that bad”, not that we went out and built homeless shelters either. I mean who does construction at 2 in the morning, right?

I remember this one Saturday night so clearly. Me, George, Jamie and Scott were going to go to this party. We heard that there were supposed to be some girls from a different school there and we wanted to go check them out… oh and something about massive amounts of booze.

So there we are getting ready to go out when a bomb was dropped on us like we were in Hiroshima. Jamie’s mom, who was supposed to be out of town, was home. She wasn’t felling well and canceled a trip, that bitch! We wanted to go out and be hoodlums and she’s going to make us be half-way decent kids. We will see about this!

You see since Jamie’s mom was home, Jamie had to be home by midnight. And since we were going to take her car without her knowing it, with her home this was going to be quite a feat. Seeing as how the oldest one of us was probably around 15 we had pretty much blown right by the paddle store and was about to put the canoe into shit creek.

This would be when George and Scott had an idea, which is ALWAYS (repeat ALWAYS) dangerous. Since Jamie’s mom was not feeling well she was probably going to take some medicine to get some sleep… oh hell, I see where he is going with this. He continues with “She’ll be out cold. All we will have to do is push the car into and out of the driveway and we cool!” Sounds like a great idea right, at least on the surface. The jury is still out on if they are geniuses or madmen.

Scott even goes as far as to off to go ride his bike to the store to pick up some medicine if she needed it.

About 9 o’clock we say that we are going to watch a movie in the living room, this should pretty much force Jamie’s mom to go to bed. Which is all part of the master plan. So she retires to her room and we are watching the clock like we are waiting on the Governor to call with our stay of execution.

About 10:30 Jamie goes to check on his mom and says that she is out cold with the TV on. This is perfect, background noise!

We rush into Jamie’s room and change clothes while Jamie goes and gets the car keys. Finally about 11:00 we are all ready to go and we have the car keys, the car in the driveway, Jamie’s mom is just short of a medicated coma and we have background noise, what could go wrong?!

Out the window we go, Scott gets behind the wheel turns the key and puts the car in neutral. We push it out of the driveway. At this point we decided that this was too close to the house and that we needed to push it down the street just a bit, then we decided it was still to close and we push it a little farther. Jamie thinks we are still to close, Jamie’s ass got out voted this time. Hell, we might as well have pushed the car to the party if we kept going. So we fire up the car and off we go to this party.

It was a good party, lots of people there, music cranked up nice and loud and the cops came twice. Not to bad at all.

Now the party has wound down and it’s evident that it is time to go home. It’s not evident because people are leaving or because the cops told us to go home, it is evident because Jamie is pacing by the door like a puppy who needs to go outside and pee. He keeps on doing the head flinch then motioning to the door as if to say “Let’s get the hell out of here”. I am not sure, but I think he might have been nervous. Of course being the kind, passionate, caring people that we were we would hold up the keys to the car, jingle them, hold up a beer with our other hand, point to the beer and then point to girls. Jamie was PISSED! It was quite funny.

We finally give in and head home around 2:30 in the morning. The closer we got to Jamie’s neighborhood the more freaked out Jamie was getting. We wanted to give him a valium enema just so he would chill out.

So we get to the neighborhood and turned off the car to push it down the street and into the driveway. You know those neighborhoods where every third or fourth house looks alike? Well this was one of those neighborhoods. So we are pushing the car down the street just before 3 in the morning and with a bit of a buzz. If you have ever had to push a car before, you know that when you are tired it’s always easier to push it with your ass while you walk backwards, which is exactly what we are doing while Scott (who was the smallest of us) is steering the car. So Scott pulls into a driveway and we proceed to make our way back into the window of Jamie’s bedroom, me first. So I take the screen off and start to make my way into the house. At this point I stop and turn back to George and say “I think we are busted” which George answers with “Why?” and I said because Jamie’s mom put a lamp here. Jamie says “WHAT!?”

This is where the story gets interesting. Right after Jamie’s oh so nonchalant outburst I hear something in the room moving and it says “DADDY!” actually it yelled “DADDY!” It was a young, maybe 8 years old, African-American girl. Right after that, I see hallway lights coming on and this mountain of a man, who must have played on the offensive line for the Buccaneers, comes FLYING into the bedroom wielding a Louisville Slugger. So there I am pushing back against the window frame yelling “LET ME OUT!!! LET ME OUT!!” while Jamie, George and Scott are pushing me in yelling “GET IN!! GET IN!!” You know how people say if you are in certain situations that your adrenaline kicks in and you have super strength? Like a mom can pick up a car if her baby is trapped under it. That must have been what happened because I so how ended up falling out of the window and Canseco swung for the fences barely missing me and making confetti out of that lamp. I swear I could feel the breeze from that bat.

So yeah, we screamed like little girls. And then just hauled ass. At first, I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew that I was getting the hell out of there and hoping that I could outrun just one of them. Fortunately Kimbo Slice decided not to pursue us. Somehow we all ended up on the side of Jamie’s house out of breath and crouching down for some reason. Feverishly looking over our shoulders. George says “Damn that was close, but we are home now. Everything is cool” I hate to break it to ya there Einstein but Jamie’s moms car is parking down the street at Andre the Giants house and I will be dammed if I am going back for it tonight. To which George replied with “Oh, yeah, forgot about that” and Jamie let out a round of “OH SHIT!” over and over again, about 30 times in a row. Well nothing we can do about it now and we are damn sure busted so I am going to hop my happy ass into the right window and get some sleep, later fellas! Did I mention that Jamie is still freaking out and telling everyone how it was a bad idea? Yeah, he does that from all the time to all the time.

Bright and early the next morning Mr Giant comes pounding on the door and we all collectively answer the door. Our asses were puckered up so tight that we could have been a diamond factory. But we explained what happened to both Jamie’s mom and the Jolly Brown Giant and prepared ourselves for punishment like had never been seen before. I think I am still on restriction.

Lessons learned from this are Jamie is NEVER to be part of any secret or Governmental affairs, The game Password, Surprise Birthday parties, Charades or anything which requires someone to remain calm. Scott can’t tell the difference between shit and shinola. And George and I drink too much.

Don’t get dead

Looking back chapter 5

The other day I got a sales paper in the mail that already had Halloween stuff in it. Which got me to thinking about making a trip out to Thrillvania (www.thrillvania.com). If you are ever in east Texas around Halloween, and like haunted houses, check it out. You will not be disappointed.

But this blog isn't about Thrillvania, it is about a haunted house that some friends and I went to while I lived in Tampa. You see, I have a friend named George who has this love/hate relationship with haunted houses. He loves going to them but he can't help freaking out while in them. You may hear more laughing than screaming when George is in a haunted house.

Any way, back to the story. We go to this haunted house that has the usual cast of characters: Dracula; Frankenstein; The Mummy; Wolfman; Freddy Kruger; Jason Voorhees; Leatherface; and so on. So you walk up to this haunted house and there is a guy dressed as Dracula laying in a coffin with the creepy organ music playing and a creepy guy giving a eulogy of sorts. After his little speech we are ushered past the coffin where I suspected the guy in the coffin to reach out or something. But nope, he just laid there. But what they did have was a guy dressed like Dracula hiding behind the coffin who jumped out at the crowd. You know, if they were smart, they would have sold new underwear in this place, they would have made a killing.

So the crowd scurries out of the room … except for George. George stands there like he is at attention leaning forward a bit screaming at the top of his lungs like he is trying to knock the guy over with his voice, frozen in fear.

We go through a couple more rooms and it is the usual stuff. Then we get to Frankenstein's Monster. You got the monster on this tilted table, pretty much with his feet on the floor, a Jacob's ladder is in the corner and the mad scientist in a white lab coat is running around behind this little half wall. Shortly after everyone is in the room this strobe light goes off and a smoke machine goes off and so on. Then the monster goes haywire and breaks through the half wall and the crowd runs down the hall. Except for George and I, George is crouched down hiding behind me and here comes good ole Frank. George and Frank are … well, basically dancing, around me like the keystone cops or something. Frankenstein reaches for George on one side, George ducks to the other side. Frank walks around the left side of me, George darts out to the right side of me. This kind of thing goes on for several seconds. The whole time George is screaming at the top of his lungs. I mean blood curdling, full of fear screaming. I, on the other hand, am laughing my ass off. Finally George sees his escape route, the door to the hallway, and makes a break for it. The guy playing Frankenstein shakes his head and cracks a grin. I give him a high five and go down the hall to catch the rest of the group.

I catch up to them and go through a few more rooms then we get to this bloody "crime scene" room, but there are no characters to be found. It would be at this point that everyone can hear George proclaim "Man this aint cool, this aint cool at all". Right after that you hear a chainsaw crank up and a guy dressed as Leatherface jumps out from behind a curtain and comes right at George. And George punches him. Yeah, right in the face. Fortunately the punch didn't connect very well and the guy was ok. So I rush George out of the room and give Leatherface a quick "sorry" and we catch back up to the rest of the group. I pull George aside and tell him that he has got to calm down and that they are not going to hurt him and he tells me he will try.
Then we get to the Wolfman. He is in a cage, thank god! Looks like all we have to do is walk along this path that goes on three sides of the cage. Worst thing that would happen is that he would reach out through the bars right? Wrong, as we soon found out some of the bars are made of rubber. So wolfie bends the bars like he is going to break out, this is when George decided that he was going to bend the bars back. It's just that the Wolfman's head, right shoulder and arm were already through the bars. George, true to form, is screaming at the top of his lungs and so in the Wolfman. The Wolfman is screaming "HEY, HEY, HEY! Let go of the bars kid! Let go!" Fortunately we were able to get George to let go and go through the doors which lead out of the house where the manager, owner, and some of the staff were waiting for us. Lovely. We hear "Hey you, come over here" Yeah this don't look good. George gets a little questioning, tells them that he was just scared. George gets a little lecture and we are on our way back to our car. George gets embarrassed when we tell it, but it is one hell of a story.