Young, Dumb & Wild

We always had fun, we never got busted, we never wrecked the folks' wheels, but man, did we ever come close.

"Whaddaya drivin'?"

"My dad's truck, so bring the ghetto blaster and the Def Leopard tapes."

"K...get here quick before my mom makes me stay home tonight."

I'm laughing at that last comment, because there's no way anyone can stop my friend, Killer, from having a good time and a lot of fun...not even her mama.

I pick up Killer and we ease on down the road headed to the Loop and make a couple of pit stops on the way. First stop is Johnny's grocery store for a case of original California Coolers (1 CC=2 beers); second stop is a deserted back road in the general vicinity of the Loop so we can drink the CC's without having to deal with the cops. To our way of thinking, and employing some logic, albeit the very fuzzy variety, we figured if we drank before we got to the Loop, then at least we wouldn't be caught "drinking and driving" while actually cruising the Loop. (Note: this is not a good idea and is very illegal, so don't try it.)

Northwest Backroads: the parts they left on the editing room floor

We're now on this perfectly deserted back road, hangin' out in dad's truck with the windows rolled down, chuggin' CC's like they're bottled water, "Rock of Ages" blastin' from the ghetto, and more or less BS'ing about anything and everything.

"Whadya do that for?"

"Shhh...I thought I heard some noise over there," as Killer turns down the tunes and looks out the passenger window.

"What's out there?"

"I dunno. Shut up so I can figure it out."

The sound of silence has descended upon us until...

"Oh Wow!"

"What!"

"Check it out! There's a cow in that field over there!"

"Uh, you better check again, I'm pretty sure that's a bull."

"Oh yeah, it is a bull" agrees Killer as she continues to stare intently out the truck's window at nature (and the bull) while I've cranked up the tunes and reached for another bottled water. It's all good and mellow on a warm summer night. Then Killer promptly phreaks out on me.

"Oh no!" she yells while backing away from the window and rolling it up.

"What!"

"The bull! It's stompin' its feet and snortin'! It's gonna come ram the truck!"

For some odd reason, a pure ironic thought has germinated in the deep recesses of my brain and managed to find its way through thick masses of gray matter to arrive in my conscious think tank.

"Hey!"

"What?"

"Do you think the bull really cares whether or not you've rolled up the window? If it wants to charge at you, it's gonna charge at you regardless of what you do to try to prevent it."

"Oh...yeah...huh?" as she rolls the window back down and starts scoping out the bull again.

The sound of silence has once again descended upon us until...

"What's that?" as I'm hearing what sounds like "moooooo" coming from somewhere inside the cab of the truck.

"What's what?"

"That noise."

"What noise?"

"Sounds like you're making some kind of weird sound over there. What're you doing?"

"Uh...mooing at the bull."

"Excuse me!?! You're doing what?"

"You heard me the first time, I'm not gonna repeat it."

"Okaaaaaay...I'm gonna make sure all our friends know you were mooing at a bull."

"Not you're not!"

"Oh yes I am!" as I'm laughing at Killer, who will kick my butt if I blab about her close encounter with a prime example of the bovine kind.

So this mooing back and forth goes on for a while longer amidst hilarity and laughter, and we drink a few more bottled waters, and it's kind of nice and mellow.

Killer's gone quiet on me, cuz she's still staring at the bull, when all of sudden, she just loses it. I mean gut bustin' guffaws of laughter that's so infectious that I start laughing with her.

Finally, I ask "what's so funny?"

"The bull!"

"What's going on with the bull now?"

"He took a sh*t!" She could barely say a word, cuz she was laughing so hard and tears are streaming down her face. So after all this snortin' and stompin' and mooin' back and forth, the best the bull can do is take a dump, and my crazy friend thinks that's absolutely hilarious. Go figure.

"So like you wanna cruise the Loop now or you wanna stay here and stare at the bull some more?"

"Alright, let's go to the Loop."

What to do when the cops tail you...

Now we're cruisin' the Loop with about 100 other vehicles: 4x4's, hotrods, beaters, low riders, and the requisite 'I can't believe I'm driving my parents' so-not-cool 4-door family sedan and, OMG! There's so-and-so who I've got a crush on and s/he just saw me and what I'm driving, and I am so mortified I could just die!' car. We got the tunes cranked, Killer's hangin' out the window and flirtin' with the dudes in the next lane over who are cruisin' in a late 70's Cougar XR-7 , and I've got one eye on the road and the other checkin' out...whatever. Oh, almost forgot, both of us have an open CC we're working on, because we forgot all about our fuzzy logic from earlier in the evening. It's all good and mellow until...

"Oh sh*t!" I yell.

"What!"

"I just took a drink while looking down the alley behind the 7-11 and the cops were sitting there! I think they saw me!"

"Oh crap! Gimme the bottle!" Killer yells as she goes into her "do-it-by-the-book" mode:

"Sit up straight!"

"OK."

"Hands at 10 and 2!" barks the Marine Corps drill sargeant.

"Got it."

"Eyes on the road, look straight ahead!"

"Yes sir!" says my smart-mouthed alter ego.

"Damnit, quit messing around! You wanna get busted?"

"Nope."

"Then pay attention! You got your seatbelt on?"

"Yeah. You got yours on? Hey! Cover the case with your jacket and...aw crap...put your own bottle back in the case, you idiot!"

"Oh yeah." laughs Killer as she herself realizes she hasn't completely enrolled in the "we don't want to get busted" program. Just our luck, the cops decide to leave the alley and get right behind us. Now it's not like we're nervous or anything like that. It's more like we're so phreaked out of our minds that we're scared straight and all of a sudden very sober. Our next move is a wise move.

"Hey, so like you wanna leave the Loop and head home now?" inquires my very phreaked out friend.

"Yeah, I think that's a great idea" as I keep looking in the rearview mirror hoping and praying the cops don't flash blue at us (they don't).

So we're now on our way home from a very phreaky night, what with the bull and stompin' and snortin' and mooing and cops and all, and I'm getting sleepy, when all of a sudden...

"Wake up!" as Killer punches the crap out of my right arm.

"Whaaaaa....?"

"You're weaving all over the road! Stay awake and drive straight."

I'm so tired I just wanna pull over and take a nap for about 24 hours. Killer's not buying that idea, so she's basically punching my arm every 10 minutes or so to make sure I'm awake and driving straight. I'm wondering if I'm gonna have permanent tissue damage on that arm.

I'm still amazed we made it home in one piece that night, cuz...

...we had fun, we didn't get busted, we didn't wreck my dad's truck, but man, did we ever come close.


(Killer's true identity shall remain hidden out of a deep and abiding respectful friendship.)

Jumpin' on Cars

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, because nothing in my family really surprises me anymore, but this particular incident did cause a raised eyebrow (or two)...

"Hi Mom!"
"Yeah...hey, I gotta tell ya a good one."
"Oh yeah! What happened?"
"Well, you know how Grandma goes over to Chris' house to play cards, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, she kinda had a fender bender with the car again."
"Again? How many has she had?"
"Well...a few," said my slightly amused mother.
"So what happened?" I asked and prepared myself for what was sure to be a doozy.

Grandma got a phone call from her best friend, Chris, who invited her and Ruth over to play cards. This "meeting" was darn near a daily routine for the three women, the youngest being in her 60's and the oldest in her late 70's. They'd sit around Chris' kitchen table and play poker and pinochle, eat authentic German food, gab about this, that and the other, and drink (sip in Grandma's case) their favorite spirits: rum & coke for Chris, Budweiser for Ruth, and Bailey's for Grandma. They usually played cards all afternoon...and into the evening...and more often than not, into the middle of the night. It was not uncommon for Grandma to get home around two or three in the morning, and then stay up a bit longer and bake bread or goodies. This baking in the middle of the night used to drive my Dad nuts, because Grandma's kitchen was right below my parents' bedroom, and the smells would waft up through the heater ducts. There were many nights Dad would get out of bed and go downstairs only to be met by Grandma with the heel of a fresh baked loaf of bread smothered with butter and jam. She kind of figured she'd better cut her son-in-law in on the treat as payment for disrupting his sleep.

This one particular night, as my mother tells it, Grandma was driving home from Chris' house and she kind of hit the stop sign at the end of Chris' street. But that wasn't all. Apparently, she also bent the hood of her car so it looked like a tent (think upside down V). And she knew if she brought her car home with the hood sticking up that my Dad was not going to be happy about it. It seems he'd recently done a major bondo job on the front end and admonished her to "be careful"--a statement many of us in our family have heard before. So rather than drive her tent, uh, I mean bondo job, no wait a sec, oh yeah, car home and fess up, Grandma did the next best thing. She turned her car around and parked it in Chris' driveway and then crashed on Chris' couch until later that morning.

LATER THAT MORNING

To this day, I'm still kind of fuzzy on a few details about what happened next, especially the part about how my Grandma managed to drive her car home without a) being able to see out the windshield of the car due to the tented hood, b) getting stopped by the cops, and c) hitting something else. All I know is she somehow managed to get her car home AFTER my Dad left for work that morning, because she really didn't want to have to explain to him (again) what happened. And then she woke up my Mom.

"Junie, I need your help!"
"What's the matter?"
"Just c'mon out here and take a look."
"Ieyeyeye, Mom! What'd you do!?!"
"Well I think I kind of hit the stop sign over at Chris' house."
"Whaddya mean you think you kind of hit it? Kind of looks like you did, huh?"
With head lowered a bit, Grandma replies "Yeah, I did...but can you help me figure out what to do with it?"
"I dunno Mom, this is kind of bad" my Mom answered as she tried to figure out what to do.

Then my Mom got this idea...

"Go into the house and get the step ladder" Mom tells Grandma.
"Whaddaya gonna do with it?"
"I don't know yet, but I'm working on it."

YOU DID WHAT?!?

While my Grandma's in the house searching for the step ladder, my Mom does what can only be described as a brilliant flash of genius. It definitely wasn't stupidity, because my Mom's not stupid, and in this particular case, it was more important to her to a) not cause undue stress or phreak out my 70-plus-year-old grandmother and b) get the problem solved before my Dad found out. So my Mom climbed onto the very top of Grandma's car, got herself into just the right position, and...

...jumped on the hood.

She managed to flatten the hood perfectly; then my Grandma showed up with the step ladder.

"Hey, how'd you get the hood flat?"
"Oh, you know, I just kinda lifted it up and down until it flattened itself...you know, it's kinda heavy, what with the weight and gravity and all...whaddaya think?"
"Looks good to me!"
"Isn't that your phone ringing?"
"Yeah, I bet that's Chris wanting to know if I'm coming over later."
"Hey Mom."
"Yeah."
"Be careful. I don't want to have to explain this to Gale, OK?"
"Yeah..." giggled my Grandma "...OK."