Jail Bait
When I was a kid, I was friends with a very dangerous guy. Well, at least he thought he was dangerous. His name was Ron and he wasn’t dangerous at all. I think you just want to appear dangerous for some reason but I was the sort of guy that thought all of his tough guy demeanor was hilarious. We definitely played rough. He was always holding a knife up to my throat which cracked me up because he would never hurt me. One time Ron and Keith and I were exploring the woods and Ron had a gun and was shooting over our heads in our direction. We could hear bullets whistling through the leaves above us.
He never would have actually shot close to us but he had a flair for the dramatic. We played in his backyard with brooms that we had soaked in gasoline. We jousted and threw them at each other like spears. Once we decided to go out in the middle of the night dressed like ninjas and hide from oncoming cars . Don’t ask why little boys do what they do. We had no frontal lobe. Young boys can’t help their impulsive behavior, besides, young boys should be watched very carefully because everybody knows how we are. When young boys act out, it is not the fault of the young boys. It’s the parent’s fault. The children can never be blamed for their impulsive behavior. Yeah, that’s the ticket, we were not responsible for what happens next.
Ron came from a wealthy family and they had two cars. Mom had a four-door Chrysler and dad had a brand-new 58' Corvette. It was loaded, seafoam blue paint, leather seats, removable hardtop and four on the floor, baby. This car was sexy and it had so much power.
How could we not open the garage door and push that car out in the middle of the night for a small joyride. Nobody else was using it and it would be a shame to let that car go to waste. Ron me were coming-of-age and both of us had just gotten our driver’s licenses and there was a big bore engine Corvette just sitting there. . We had no choice. 16-year-old boys cannot resist that kind of temptation. One sip of the stolen fruit made junkies of both of us. We were Crockett and Tubbs way before Miami Vice. A boss stereo blasting at us while we were riding around with no particular place to go whatsoever. We were masters of the universe with this car. We might even be able to find girls. Who knows anything could happen. It never dawned on us that Ron’s dad could discover his car missing and call in a stolen car report. Well that never happened. I think we discussed how the Corvette had a positraction rear end. Of course scientific minded 16-year-old boys need to verify a car’s performance so they know what to do in case of an emergency. We decided to go to the local sewage treatment plant that burns methane gas 24 seven. Out in front of the sewage plant was a huge grassy area that wasn’t really designated for anything . They mowed it so it looked nice but nobody had a picnic there probably because of the fart burners overhead. We hopped the curb and started driving around in this grassy area testing the traction of the rear end and there was a rabbit ahead of us. Ron punched it to chase the rabbit and I thought it was funny because I was thinking jackrabbit meat might taste really good in Chile. Of course we didn’t do very well catching the rabbit. We did, however, succeed in chasing that nasty old rabbit off of the grass and prevented him from harming the lawn, what there was left of it. Some of the things Ron and I did could have landed us in the slammer. We were pretty lucky because we got away with everything almost.. We decided that as civic minded youths, we should do every thing possible to protect the local golf course from the scourge of rabbits. There are tons of rabbits on the golf course and they just watered. We found that when you slam a Corvette down into second and floored it, you slowly sink in but you also start to slowly gain momentum. You’re really better off to slowly accelerate because then you can slowly build up speed to 50 or 60 and just for fun put it into a four-wheel drift by spinning the steering wheel. That Corvette cornered so beautifully on the lawn at 50 miles an hour. The car stayed flat as a pancake. I don’t think we ever did catch any jackrabbits but we did find out that groundskeepers are very fussy. They seem to be angry about something when we drove by the next day. That’s the thanks we get for chasing all those rabbits off of the golf course and aerating the soil underneath the sod.. One time we were chasing down a jackrabbit and it was an owl. We raised hell for several hours and then went back to Ron’s house to return the car to the garage only to find out we had been busted. Ron’s dad had an emergency call in the middle of the night and had to use mom’s car instead of his Corvette. I think that was the last time we borrowed the Corvette.
@love@claire
