graceland's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remembering teenage escapades I love my annual August week vacation. Every year, I take a week in August and stay alone at my parents' rental at the shore. We've always owned or rented in the same 6 block area of the island; all of the friends I met growing up are still around as well. And relatives...aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents. All within a 6 block radius. Tonight, as often happens, I saw 3 gorgeous, tan teenage girls running barefoot, holding their shoes or flip flops, running home on beach-weathered-tough soles. Late for curfew. It made me think about the insanity that was my life as a teenager here. Insanity in a good way. I flashed back to when I was 19 or 20 and riding down the same road that I was riding again now. Then, I was coming from home and had snuck beers into my backpack, not that I really needed to hide my drinking from my parents. I was a college student. I was almost legal. That wasn't an issue for them. Getting arrested, on the other hand, and for something so silly - would have pissed them off. As I was riding down the rode just 3 blocks to my destination (a house party), a cop drives up behind me and tails me. I suddenly got paranoid. I may have been stoned. The cop drove slowly behind my back tire, the headlights of his vehicle lighting the abandoned road ahead of me, intimidating me. I freaked. I drove up onto a sidewalk; the cop pulled closer to the curb, mimicing me, suddenly flashing his lights. I immediately hopped off my bike, dropped it on the new white sidewalk and ran down the driveaway ahead of me. The cop jumped out of the car and I could see him running down the driveaway behind me. Getting rid of dead weight, I slid out of my backpack containing beer and dropped it conveniently on the doorstep to the side door of the house that I was currently running alongside. I reached a fence at the end of the driveway, and hearing the cop pacing behind me, I spilt left and took my chances. I ran through a laundry line, across a yard, through sharp bushes that cut my face and body, to find a wooden fence and a wall. I had no choice but to climb the chain metal fence that I had been running along, and bushes that cut me all over again. I made it over the fence in one swift move - I was in the shape of my life, with an athletic build. I landed in someone else's yard and looked behind me to see the cop struggling to get over the fence. I had some time. I kept running down another dark driveway and saw that my options were running out on a very lite street and running the risk of another cop car being there waiting for me or running through the open side door of the house to the other side and continuing this Ferris Bueller mockery. The side door to the house was open and the lights were on. A couple my parents age were sitting in the living room watching TV and there's was no way I could run through their house and disrupt them. I ran down the driveway, into the brightly lit street. I never would have made it - I would have been in plain view and what was I going to do - run for blocks and blocks? I sprinted across the street and up a few yards and I dove in between cars, crawling the sidewalk on my stomach. Between the cars, I could see the cop in the brightly lit street, looking for me. I squeezed my body between the curb and the bottom of a parked Blazer. I squiggled on my back, underneath the car, thinking about Cape Fear but seeing nothing above to hold onto. I just laid there, with my head turned from under the car, bleeding, looking at the cop just feet from me. It was like a Western. Me, the robber, sweating starting to sweat, under this car, trying to catch my breath without breathing, willing this cop to give up. He literally, walked 360 degrees me. My eyes followed his feet as they circled this vehicle looking for me up and down the street. Never thinking to bend down and look underneath. After what seemed like forever, I listend to the cop walk away. I laid under that car for some time, long enough to watch his vehicle come around the block for one more scan. Finally, I crawled out from under the car and began walking briskly to my friends house through backyards and alleys. Never enough speed to raise suspicision, but walking with a purpose. I wanted to speed like a tiger. As the lore goes, I then walked into this house party, covered in bleeding scratches all over my face, arms and legs - leaves in my hair and gravel embedded in my arms - and said, "Dude..the cops...chase...they got my bike...and my beer." The whole party stopped and then erupted around me. People surrounded me all night like a celebrity. The next day, my parents came up to my breakfast waitressing job and saw me covered in scabs. They asked me what happened. I stood their in my breakfast grill waitress uniform of restaurant t-shirt tucked in my oversized boxers or lacrosse shorts that I played off as shorts covered by a basic blue 3-pocket apron, and with a pot of coffee balanced in the hand I had rested on a hip, I calmly explained the insane events of the night before, including my bike being impounded by the cops and my need for my mom to go to the police station and file a stolen bike report in order to get my own bike back. My parents reaction was unique, like my parents. Because they are cool. My father, didn't believe me. He thought that I flipped and initated the chase for a more sinister reason than carrying beer; he was implying that I had pot on me. Honestly,, I didn't have anything but beer on me. I may have been stoned, but I wasn't carrying anything on me... My mother did, indeed, go down to the police station and file that stolen report (against me, ironically) and got my bike back. She came back and took me aside and said, "Listen, those police have an excellent description of you. It's eerie. You'd better lay low for the rest of thre summer." I still have that bike. I was riding it tonight.
12:28 a.m. - 2006-08-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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