Got Ice and Got Arrested, Kind Of.

I guess I was around 30 years old, so I'm gonna say this story takes place in the summer of 2007, in Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

Highlands Ranch is, without a doubt, THE PERFECT SUBURB, and my street Heatherton Lane, was the crown jewel; with perfectly painted McMansions and perfectly manicured lawns, hedges, trees and...people.

Wide, clean and perfectly paved streets, master-planned communities with "Final Build Out" dates so you could know when the 7th day was and when the gods of Shea Homes would rest.

There were tons, JUST TONS of white families just multiplying all over the place like it's their job (seriously, I think there was like one black family in the whole town, and two hispanic families...uggghhhh, diversity was a problem), block parties every weekend, game night at somebodies house every other night, new neighbor parties that lasted three days, goodbye parties that lasted a week.

Land Rovers and Volvos perched in every garage and every other house seemed to have a boat or jet skis or a motorcycle or a jetpack sitting out front. Children's bikes and toys littering the streets, neighbor dogs just wandering into your house for a mid-day nap...

...I knew everybody and everybody knew me, which means (of course) that we gossiped the shit out of each others private lives until they weren't private anymore. In fact, after a while nobody in my neighborhood really expected to keep any secrets (air quote) truly secret. (air quote)

It was the ideal of suburban life.

The most perfectly managed community with the most benign and quiet neighborhoods in Americana. (Hey The 50's, Be Jealous!)

The couple that we hung out with the most was A&T. (A&T are now divorced and I'm not friends with either of them anymore, but for all I know they could be doing wet work for the CIA, so I'm just going to use their initials just to be safe. Cool? Cool.)

"A" was my home slice. The cool guy transplant from Detroit. We mountain biked together a bunch of times, brewed beer several times, worked together a few times and bullshitted with eachother most of the time. And when we weren't doing all of that stuff we were just hanging out drinking the hard stuff and telling lies about people we knew.

"A" was, no joke, the best guy friend I think I've ever had.

"T" was (true story) pale, bug-eyed, red-headed, loud-mouthed, tactless, cruel and, well, she was just a real bitch. I never understood why "A" put up with her, let alone married her in the first place.

On this particular night "A", my ex and I, along with a few stragglers from my ex's work were celebrating my new Wii console and trying to distract "A" from the fact that he was headed toward divorce with "T" because she sucked ass (sad story), anywho, we had been going pretty hard at the drinks since early in the evening. I rule at Wii. Btw.

We've got the music blaring now, the Wii is a hit, "A" has temporarily forgotten how shitty his life has become and I'm feeling like that guy in that movie where he says "I am a golden god!" right before he jumps off a roof into somebody's pool. You know the one..? Doesn't matter, I felt that good, only I didn't have a pool to jump into, so I jumped into another cocktail. Wheee! Splash! Drunk.

I guess it was around 2 in the morning when the saddest thing happened...We Ran Out OF ICE!!! I know, I cried too.

Whilst the other party people didn't know that we had run out of ice, "A" and I were all too suddenly aware, and knowing that we were still far too thirsty to quit; we immediately devised a brilliant strategy to get more of the cold stuff.

We were going to steal it. Kind of.

The thing is that since "A" and "T" had been going through the first days of their separation and impending divorce "A" had been staying with us because he and "T" couldn't be in the same room or he might strangle her or worse, forgive her for being a cheating bitch. (truth)

"A" had only been staying with us for a few days so far, but shit was definitely tense between those two and "A" did not want to see her AT ALL.

Now, had I been a better man or more sober I would have been sensitive to that fact.

But I wasn't, and I wasn't. So I wasn't.

A few minutes later I had convinced "A" to join me on the black-ops mission to get more ice.

I think my exact words were "Do it for you. Do it for me bro! WE'VE SIMPLY GOT TO SAVE THIS PARTY!!"...Hi, Drama Club? Yah, it's your Boss.

"A"s house was on the next block over, so cocktail in hand, yes I brought it with, we set out at a fast walk, trying to be as quiet as possible while drunkenly (read: loudly) reciting (read: shouting) the lyrics from Motorheads classic "The Ace Of Spades"..."You know I'm born to lose/and gambling's for fools/But that's the way I like it baby/I don't wanna live forever"...ahhh poetry for the weary soul.

We got to "A"s house and he wanted to see if "T" was even home in the first place so he stood on the bumper of his work truck and peeked into the windows of his garage door. He panicked and said something to the effect of he couldn't "go thru with it", couldn't "stand to see her face, even on accident." (actual quotes)

So, we bailed. We ran back to my house and decided that even great parties have to end sometime.

The End.

j/k.

We went back to "A"s house a few minutes later (after I pumped him up about "Epic Parties" and "Plenty of Fish in the Sea" and "Whiskey Tastes Better With Ice" and "I Won't Be Your Friend If You Don't Man Up And Do This". You know, pep talk stuff.)

We get to the house and for some reason "A" decides that rather than walking calmly into HIS OWN HOME to retrieve the ice, he's going to sneak in as quietly as possible, he's not going to turn on any lights, he's telling me to keep the Motorhead lyrics down and he even takes his sandals off! Ninja!

So I'm standing on the curb, humming metal tunes to myself when "A" comes tearing out of the house AT A FULL SPRINT, carrying the entire fucking ice box! Which he gives to me!

Now "A" is sprinting for my house and I (retarded) don't know why not to run, so I run too!

We're about halfway around the block now, giggling to ourselves about a successful mission and how the party will be "even more epic now", and far, far in the distance we hear police sirens, maybe two police cars.

"Oh man! somebody's in trouble dude!"

"I know right?"

"It must be like three in the morning, who the hell is up at three in the morning in Highlands Ranch!?...Dumb shits!"

"Totally!"

Now, far at the edge of my neighborhood I see them, two police cars with sirens blaring, and one blacked out SUV with a SWAT looking dude hanging off the side of the vehicle.

I shit you not!

"DUDE! I think those guys are after somebody around here!"

"This is crazy! Who do you think they're after!?"

At this point the police and swat cars turned onto my street and gunned their throttles headed in our direction...

"Oh. My. God. Bro! I think they're after somebody in our neighborhood!"

"Damn Dude!"

The cop cars screeched to a very dramatic stop right behind us. Guns Drawn.

"Oh, it's us."

"Oh."

POLICE: "PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS IN THE AIR!!"

Oops.

Now, I wanted to comply, I wanted to put my hands in the air. I really did.

But you see, I had the ice box.

A's got his hands in the air by now, and I'm just standing there looking at the cop, at the ice, at the cop, at the ice...at the cop.

POLICE: "YOU WITH THE ICE! SIT DOWN!!"

No problem. But, I didn't want to sit on the sidewalk because, let's face it, sitting on the hard concrete is uncomfortable no matter how you sit. So I walked slowly to the curb (POLICE: "SIT DOWN!") gently set the ice box down and sat on the curb with my legs stretched and crossed in front of me. Comfy as Kanga in Roo.

The thing about this cop that's yelling at us is that he's HUGE and really serious looking. Imagine "Bull" from Night Court with the voice of the Sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.

Also, point of interest, the other cops and the one SWAT dude still have drawn guns.

POLICE: "BACK TOWARDS ME"

"A" backs up.

POLICE: "INTERLACE YOUR FINGERS BEHIND YOUR BACK!"

"A" tries, fails, says: "I don't understand" ever so quietly.

The cop rumbles over and demonstrates by turning around and holding his own hand behind his back..."LIKE THIS!"

"A" does it.

The cop grabs "A"s pinkies and pulls up. Hard. He starts frisking him and says "DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING IN YOUR POCKETS THAT WILL POKE, PROD OR GENERALLY MAKE ME UNHAPPY?"

"A" says "I don't think so..."

The cop is now touching the OUTSIDE of "A"s pockets and (no shit) says...

"WHAT'S THIS? GUM!?"

"yes."

"WHAT KIND? STRIDE?!?"

"Wow yah it is!"

"THAT'S GOOD GUM!"

The cop touches the outside of his other pocket and says...

"WHAT'S THIS? A PHONE?!"

"yah"

"IS IT A MOTOROLA RAZOR?!"

"that's incredible! it is!"

"I HAVE THE SAME PHONE!"

The cop pulls out "A"s wallet and shouts "GO SIT NEXT TO YOUR FRIEND WITH THE ICE!"

"A" sits next to me and he's actually smiling at me as he says "That was pretty cool."

"STOP TALKING TO THE GUY WITH THE ICE!"

And then..."YOU! WITH THE ICE! STAND UP...BACK TOWARDS ME!"

I do.

"INTERLACE YOUR FINGERS BEHIND YOUR BACK"

I try, I fail. "I don't understand"

The cop walks over to me and demonstrates by holding his own hand behind his back..."LIKE THIS!"

I do it and the cop grabs me by the pinkies and lifts up. Hard. And starts frisking me...

"DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING IN YOUR POCKETS THAT WILL POKE, PROD OR GENERALLY MAKE ME UNHAPPY?!"

"I don't think so..."

Touching all of my pockets on the outside he shouts into my ear "WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ANYTHING IN YOUR POCKETS!?"

"I didn't plan ahead?"

"WHERE DID YOU GET THE ICE?!"

"From his house...?"

"WHAT'S THE ICE FOR?!"

"Cocktails?"

"GO SIT NEXT TO YOUR ICE!"

So, the cop walks over and talks to his buddies and slowly but surely we see the guns going down and being holstered. The blacked out SUV with the SWAT dude drives off and so does the other cop car...so now it's just me, "A", the cop and the ice. But he's still shouting, even tho he's like, 12 inches from our faces.

"OK GUYS, HERE'S THE DEAL, WE GOT A REPORT OF A COUPLE OF GUYS DRESSED EXACTLY LIKE YOU TWO"...

"Exactly like us?!" ... We were wearing t-shirts and blue jeans, I had sandals on, "A" was barefoot.

"EXACTLY LIKE YOU! ANYWHO (He says "anywho") WE GOT A REPORT OF A COUPLE OF CAR THIEVES CASING A HOUSE ABOUT 30 MINUTES AGO AND THEN WE GOT A REPORT THAT THE SAME THIEVES CAME BACK AND BROKE INTO A HOUSE AND STOLE AN ICE BOX INSTEAD!"

"Ah Ha Moment" here. These cops were bored to death on their night shift and got a report of a couple of idiots sneaking around in the middle of the night with an ice box...this makes so much more sense now.

So, the cop checks "A"s ID and sees that the address on his license is the same as the house where we stole the ice from. We talk to him about the party and how we ran out of ice. He seems to relax (a little) and he actually walks with us back to my house where the music is STILL BLARING and nobody even knows about the drama that was happening less than 30 feet away and at this moment the hard-ass cop becomes the laid-back cop we had suspected was hiding behind that booming voice...

Until he says his goodbyes "DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!"

After all that; the party was, in fact, more epic.

BTW...I found out later it was "T" that had called the cops.

Got in a fight. Peed my pants.

Got in a fight. Peed my pants.

Mama called me Benji.
In 1986 I was nine years old. I weighed about sixty pounds if I had rocks in my pocket.

Until the age of eleven you would find me wearing a threadbare Mickey Mouse T-shirt with quarter length sleeves, bright green soccer socks, and running shorts that showed too much of everything.

I had an obsession with Band-Aids. Even if I didn't need them, Band-Aids.
Not that I didn't frequently need Band-Aids back then, with a fresh scrape or a crusty scab on each knee, elbow, joint and phalanges.
I had Band-Aids on top of Band-Aids on top of Band-Aids.

If you see old pictures of me you'll see that I had one or two of my front teeth missing for most of my childhood, but I was too young to care how I looked. With mirth on my mind, you would find me grinning like I had just lit a cherry bomb in the middle of the night.
Mischievous, but soft-spoken. I was Dennis the Menace with a Pig-Pen sort of je ne sais quoi.
Also, I would like to say that my dad never put a bowl on my head to cut my hair.
I would like to say that, but I can't.
Fuck.

I remember the summer of 1986 particularly well because I had saved up enough money from my chores and couch-diving to buy a brand new pair of KangaROOS.
ROOS were the shoe with the little Velcro pocket on the outside. Maybe they're still being made, I don't know. I hope so.
I could never figure what the makers of ROOS meant to be stored in that tiny pocket.
Weed? Stinky shoe-weed?
All I knew was that if I found a quarter, I knew a safe place to put it.

On the radio Madonna begged Papa don't preach, while Peter Gabriel wanted nothing more than to be our Sledgehammer. Whatever that meant.
At the third annual MTV Video Music Awards, three Norwegian boys in a band called A-Ha came close to winning video of the year for Take on me. A Tron-inspired virtual reality dreamscape about computer viruses and sexy pencil-drawn people saving the world with some combination of fervent eye contact and effortless note-holding somewhere above high-C.
Although A-Ha won 8 out of the 11 possible awards, they lost their chance for the most coveted "Moonman" for video of the year to Dire Straits and their working-class-daydream anthem Money for nothing.
Chicks for free, indeed.

That summer I spent most of my waking hours with my brother Jimmy and his friend Scott.
Scott was a lightning rod for shitstorms.
A porno loving super-nerd that was rail-thin and a foot taller than me. He had that hockey-cut blonde hair that hung lanky across his forehead long-before "goth" was a thing in our world.
The ghostly paleness of Scott's skin was directly opposed by his loud mouth and perpetual shit-eating grin. His pinched face was dominated by a thick pair of black framed glasses with coke bottle lenses.
All of that, and I would still be remiss if I failed to document the Most-Scott feature of all; a fat white zit that owned real estate on the tip of his nose in-perpetuity.
I believe now that the Pimple of the Century had in fact been Fetus In Fetu. Not a zit at all, but Scott's womb-twin straining to emerge.
"Hi there, my name is Brian, I am your brother, please don't pop me."

Jimmy was the oldest of us, and so he was our leader. But he wasn't our leader only because he was the oldest. And not because he pulled his tube socks all the way up to his knees either, or for the sake of his white mans afro and that he could play fleur de lis on the piano while lying upside down beneath the keys.
Although to 9-year-old me, these were perfectly reasonable skills and attributes by which a leader should be chosen.
Jimmy was in charge because he was cool-headed where Scott and I were scattered.
When it was time for us to be awesome, we looked to Jimmy for the plan.

We rode BMX bikes with hard plastic seats too-low and shiny chrome handlebars too-high. The sound of our knobby tires and the buzzing-hum of a baseball card ground against the spokes of our wheels drifted on the breeze as we cruised the shrub-lined suburban streets of Pembleton Place and Appletree Drive.

We ate Pop Rocks and drank New! Coke. Grape flavored Big League Chew held a place of power in the pantheon of our sugary delights over Nerds, Charleston Chew and Licorice Ropes.
With ritualized and suicidal regularity we would gulp Slurpee's until our brains froze and panic began to set in. We would turn our faces to the fury of the summer sun with our mouths open wide and a silent prayer in our hearts that we wouldn't freeze to death on a day when you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.

We were unknowing participants in a childhood science experiment. Every day we were testing Einsteins Theory of Relativity in a summertime petri dish.
Hours in the sun stretched on like eternity as we searched for frogs and snakes, or pretended to be Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, or rode our bikes all over our tiny universe; only to find that summer had passed before the blink of an eye.

On that day we had been catching crawdads in a swampy creek in the middle of a four acre field that five years later would be called Peterson Lane Park. That afternoon we had played too long and denied time it's prize until the sun was nearing the horizon. Each of us would be in three different kinds of trouble if we were home after dark, and while we knew we should have taken the straight shot home on Peterson Lane, the siren song of the The Rolling Stones called for us to continue our adventures.

So we sang loudly and out of key as we peddled all the way down Yardley Street, the long way home.
Time was on our side. Yes it was.

We were only a few minutes of easy coasting and a few lazy pedal strokes from the safety of our own neighborhood when we ran straight into Popeye and his merry band of turd burglars.
Yes, Popeye. His name was Popeye. I shit you not.*

(*Some shitting required)

Popeye, enemy number one.
Popeye because of his lazy and ptotic right eye which made his left eye appear shockingly wide open.
Enemy because he was a bully.

Popeye and his gang lived one block over on Dunaway Drive, and though Dunaway was only one street away it may as well have been a war-torn, third-world country. Only bad things could happen if we were to find ourselves over there on accident.
And here we had done the thing we had always feared we would do. Borders had been crossed, the unspoken rule had been broken. The fight was about to go down and all I could think was how I wished to My Own Personal Jesus that I hadn't drank so much New! Coke that afternoon.

We circled each other on our BMX's and tried to look fiercely tough. More Michael Jackson in BAD than the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story. Way more mean mugging, a lot less finger snapping. The tension hung around us like salty sea air. Inside my mouth it tasted like I had just licked a battery.

The fight started the way that all fights between kids do.
Popeye was the first to say the phrase that pays "What are YOU looking at?"
Scott spat back without missing a beat "We're looking at your freaky popped out eye man!"
Popeye's turds tried a different tack by laughing and pointing at our bikes. "Did you get those banana bikes at a flew market?"
I jumped into the verbal fray while still trying not make eye contact with my enemy "Where'd you get that popped out eye? The junk heap?!"
The turds commented on our fashion sense. We made size estimates on that enormous popped out eye. They glared at us. We glared back with our best imitation of his popped out eye.

Round and round on our bikes, we circled each other trading barbs and stingers, encouraging each other with "Oooohhs" and "Ahhhhs" like we were watching a fireworks show. We paced and circled and waited expectantly for the distant thunder that would end this face off with a vow and a warning, or the lightening strike that would end in bloody noses.

Popeye and his turds rammed our bikes with theirs and in the silence that followed I laughed like a hyena with tears in my eyes and shouted "Your poor mom! Just look at that freakin eye!"

The loudness of my voice in that sudden silence was only overcome by the sound of Popeye throwing his bike to the ground with a metallic crunch. And suddenly he was running straight at us. I looked at Scott assuming that Popeye would fight him because they were about the same size, but Scott was looking right back at me with ever-widening eyes behind his coke-bottle glasses.

I looked back at Popeye's bum-rush just in time to see that the monsters bulk had filled my horizon.
He shoved me hard in the chest, I fell back several steps but somehow managed not to go down on my ass. I looked around in shock and terror. The bastard was ready to fight, and he had chosen me.

I pissed my pants.

In that dilated moment of time I experienced everything around me at once and wondered, not without a sense of humor, if this was the moment of my death. Before me Popeye tensed himself to launch another attack, I looked to Scott and my brother to see they were as shocked as I was. My suddenly released bladder had darkened the fabric of my running shorts and was running down my legs in a multitude of rivers, soaking into my socks and splashing onto my new KangaROOS.

One million thoughts ran through my little dutch-boy-haircut-head in the matter synapse's fart and I pondered to myself what kind of an asshole would pick on a kid half their size. I thought back to every furious wrestling match with Jimmy. Every shoulder punch, pulled ear and forbidden kick to the crotch. Every tangled heap of arms and legs flailing in the hopes of connecting a winning blow,

Reality hit me harder than Popeye had.
I had never been in a real fight before. Maybe I was going to die after all.

A tiny helium-laced voice cried out inside of me "This guy is a MONSTER! And he's singling me out!? NO! Fight Scott! Fight my brother! Fight your mom and dad for giving you that fucking eye! Just leave me alone!"

I wanted to run home and crawl into bed. I wanted to fake my own death and run away to Spain where I would begin my life again and become a Matador. I searched every corner of my mind for some strength to help me not cry in front of this bully and his gang of devils.

I was terrified of getting a beat down, humiliated at emptying my bladder and was now seriously considering disowning my brother for not jumping in front of me to fight off the open maw of a violent appetite before me.
My options were slim to none. I could attempt to run, I could lay down and be pummeled like a sack of apples, or I could fight.

With the mad acceleration of a sports car the moment of silence and slow-motion ended with a sickening quickness as another shove to my chest broke through my very own Fortress of Solitude.
I shook with fear and humiliation. The pungent smell of urine was strong in my nose and I felt the dampness of my shorts and socks grow cold in the cool breeze that blew in and around and through the destiny of this moment. I looked down at my KangaROOS, now soiled and no longer new, then I looked back at my enemy.

And you know what?
I kicked his ass.

I sprang onto Popeye like a demon-cat, screaming at the top of my lungs that I pure, cold, HATED him for making me piss my pants! I shoved him in the chest and kicked at his shins. I punched him in the ear and the throat. I scratched at his eyes and spat at his face and cursed with unholy ability.

I fought like a child possessed, not knowing where my strength came from but relishing every blow I rained down on the bastard. Not knowing how all of a sudden Popeye was on the ground, and I was on top of him with my hands around his neck and my knee jammed into his groin. Not knowing how I got behind him as quickly as a leopard climbs a tree or how his throat was suddenly and unbelievably being crushed between my tiny shaking arms in a rear naked choke-hold.

I saw snatches and glimpses of faces around me, some cheering me on, others cursing Popeye for letting a baby beat him up. I saw my brother with a look of cautious excitement. Scott was pumping his fists in the air and howling like a heathen war-child. But I couldn't hear them yelling, and I couldn't hear Popeye choking and saying "Uncle!"

All around me was chaos but the soundtrack blasting in my head was a solid 100 foot wall of white noise, overwhelming and hot, it rained down around me like glittering dust particles in a beam of sunlight.

I let Popeye go and stood shakily to my feet only to feel the brutal slap of an old broom smack me squarely across the side of my head. My hearing returned suddenly and awfully to the screams of the old woman who's lawn we had appropriated mid-fight "GET THE HELL OFF OF MY LAWN! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

I had won.

We scrambled to run away and left Popeye where he lay, being comforted by his gang of turds.
Scott picked up my small bike and ran along side his own, Jimmy grabbed his bike from off of the ground and before turning to run he grabbed my hand and pulled me along.

It's near dark as we turn onto Pembleton Place, home sweet home.

Scott is near mania with excitement and can barely keep his feet on the ground. He sets my bike down in front of me. Before Scott turns to go home he bows to me, deeply and awkwardly, and in his best Knights of the Round Table voice says "I commend your efforts, good sir. "

My brother has had his arm around me as we've walked home. I step away from him to pick up my bike and we turn to cross the street, almost home. Jimmy is quiet, but he's watching me. I think he knows whatever show of strength I had displayed before had taken it's toll and I was now as weak as a kitten. He's quiet, but I think he's proud of me.

As the moon returns the light of that lost summer day I hear the gentle voice of Freddie Mercury drifting softly through the night. He tells me of a man who has made mistakes, paid his dues, bowed at the close of the curtain, and risen to defy the odds.

Guitar solo.

Broke a Bone

In my early teen years, I hated this one kid...With a vengeance.

That's right HATE.
I remember his name but I'm not going to type it out, liable laws being what they are...Let's just say that his first name rhymes with Dumb and his last name rhymes with Ass.
I don't really remember now why I hated Dumbass so much back then.

I do remember that Dumbass was Uber-Annoying and liked to push my buttons, he had a way-too-big forehead, thought he was the best at everything and challenged me to beat him at virtually anything he happened to be doing at the moment.
And I do mean ANYTHING. I'm talking about Basketball, Football, Foosball, Air Hockey, Soccer, video games, running, walking, breathing, holding breath, eating, vomiting, starving, making paper airplanes, flying paper airplanes, building model cars, destroying model cars, handstands, pumpkin stands, kick stands, duck walks, high jumps, triple jumps and anything and everything else that could be done as a competition...In short he was Lex Luther to my Superman, Tom to my Jerry, Boss Hog to my Bo...or Luke.
That's the background, we didn't get along and we were always competing.

So, at this time I was around 13 or 14 years old...you know, still pretty dumb, practically cro-magnon really.

My family (2 parents, 2 teenagers, 2 grade schoolers, 2 pre-schoolers) had befriended this other family that was also huge, by all accounts, I mean they were HUGE! I'm pretty sure they outnumbered us by at least 3 kids and to my understanding the mother of this family continued shooting out kids until only a few years ago...Holy Uncontrolled Child-Bearing Batman!
And, you guessed it, Dumbass was one of the kids that made up this hoard. He was the second oldest, just like me, and ever since the day that our two families started hanging out Dumbass lived his life like a fire was under his ass...He was in constant motion and stuck on Code Level Annoying 24-7-365.

On this particular day Dumbass's Dad had built a skateboard ramp...The skateboard ramp of doom. It was sort of a launch ramp for future astronauts really, the angle on the ramp was incredibly steep and you had to have a great deal of momentum behind you as you hit the ramp to even get to the lip of the ramp and launch off of the other side...needless to say; our skinny asses were not getting much air.
In the heat of the afternoon Dumbass and his 17 brothers and sisters were taking a soda break when I got the idea of the day and began to plot out my course to fame and riches.

Imagine if you will for a moment...
A suburban side walk.
On one side a row of bushes that separate the front yard from the world.
On the other side a fairly unused surface street.
Before me a stretch of sidewalk that ends at the ramp about 20 feet away.
The ramp sits couched between a telephone pole and the sidewalk shrubbery.
12 feet up the telephone pole a crossbar the width of a baseball bat's handle crosses over the sidewalk.
The telephone pole crossbar hangs 12 feet above and slightly ahead of the skateboard ramp of doom.
Perfect.

This is how I imagined it going in my mind...
I would set the skateboard aside, kneel in a sprinters starting stance and bolt from that position of calm readiness into a frenzy of spinning arms and legs like Fred Flintstone on a Brontosaurus steak. My mind focused on the crossbar, my body tense and ready for the jump. As I near the skateboard ramp of doom I look briefly to my right at Dumbass and his hoard and say something smart, like "Watch this!" or "Heads up!" or "You suck!"...Then, turning my attention back to the ramp at the last possible second; I'd run up the ramp at terrific speed and jump at the last second straight up into the air. In slow motion now, arms reaching, teeth gritting, soaring like an eagle...I'd grab onto the telephone poles crossbar and swing in the air with the greatest of ease with a laugh on my lips and a twinkle in my eye as Dumbass sits dejected and alone as I deal out the final trump card that he can not match or dispute. The neighborhood girls would be impressed by my athleticism, naturally, so they would come from several blocks around and cheer for me and chant my name.
Eventually I would get down from the pole and walk up and down the block signing autographs while surrounded by admirers and lovers until the sun went down on the glorious day that I had created.

This is how it actually went...
I set my skateboard aside and knelt in a sprinters starting stance. I bolted from that position of calm readiness into a clumsy ambling gait worthy of a newborn deer. My mind a jumbled mess of confusion, my body turning to jelly and telling me to stop. As I near the skateboard ramp of doom I look briefly to my right at Dumbass and his hoard and say something dumb, like "Hey!"...Then, turning my attention back to the ramp at the last possible second; I'd run up the ramp at a fast walk and jump at the last second straight up into the air. In slow motion now, arms reaching, teeth gritting, trembling like a leaf...I reach out for the crossbar and only manage to brush my two longest fingers against the cold hard steel before the momentum of my body plus the brush of my fingers against the pole set my body in motion. I begin to twirl in mid air completing a double backwards flip before landing on the sidewalk. When my body slams down on the concrete sidewalk my arm has hit the ground a millisecond before my face. My chin slams squarely into the middle of my right arm breaking both of the bones in my arm into two pieces and twisting my arm into something resembling Gumby in the hands of a sadist.
I raised my head and looked around, a little dazed, a little confused. I saw my arm all twisted and broken and it definitely did not click in my brain that I had done some damage until I turned to Dumbass and his family to point out that my arm looked funny. When I saw his face and the other kids screaming and running away I got a new perspective on the condition I was in. I immediately became aware of the numb sensation coming from my arm and after I looked at it again I knew that I wasn't feeling weird because my idea hadn't worked, I was feeling weird because I'd broken my body!
So, an air splint administered by a hot looking blonde EMT and an ambulance ride to an emergency room brought me to the point in the story where the doctor injected some kind of three wisemen of shots into my veins and I started feeling sleepy right away, but I did not fall asleep before witnessing the doctor taking a firm grasp on my hand with one of his hands and my shoulder with his other and proceed to pull the broken bones in my arm apart and then reset them...after that it was 3 days of drugged-up bliss eating popsicles and ice cream in between naps and TV watching.

If I had it all to do over again I think I would've put a little bit more steam in my engine before jumping off that ramp.
It would have been glorious!

Anywho, that's the first time I ever broke a bone.

Learned to Cuss

At a certain point in my mid-teen years I came to the clear and sudden realization that my older brother was going to marry a girl that I had had a crush on for a pretty good amount of time...Now, don't get too emotional over this statement of seeming teenage romantic nostalgia, you don't know the facts yet...the truth is, she hated me at the time and will admit to that fact today.

This story starts with my Sister-in-law because without her delicate instruction I would be perhaps the least foul-mouthed Irishman alive today, let alone that I would have the worst tone, inflection, affect and emphasis of maybe anybody that had ever cursed or ever would...

In short, at 12 midnight in the Taco Bell parking lot at 771 Stony Point Rd in Santa Rosa, California; the existential summer blonde, my future sister-in-law and ex-crush broke it down and showed a good Christian boy the sheer joy of a properly executed F-word and all of the magical ways that that word could be promulgated.

I remember practicing the spacing, rhythm and tempo of the phrase that she had given me to learn by...frightening yet brilliant in its simplicity: "Fuck you, You fuckin'-fuck!"...Over and over again I would recite the cursing mantra until I felt that I had sufficiently matched her cadence and inflection...I feel a small amount of pride when I tell you today that I'm probably the best and most well-versed F-word enthusiast that I know of...aside of course from my sister-in-law...

She, the wizened instructor. I, the eager grasshopper.
The tools; one word, endless combinations and a smirking sarcasm born of pride in craftsmanship and unbridled enthusiasm.

The next week she taught me the proper letter emphasis of the word Shit...
It went something like this "Shea-It."

I'm still working on Shit, be patient master, be patient.

Kissed a girl

I was 8 years old, maybe 9, I'm pretty sure that I had buck teeth and a page boy haircut. God help me.

To complete the image of me at 8 or 9 years old in your mind; imagine that I am wearing hand-me-down velcro tennis shoes, knee-high soccer socks, a sky blue t-shirt with "Benjy!" proudly printed across the front and shorts that would make Magnum P.I. blush.
Got that? Ok...Here we go...

Her name was Amanda, I think. She was cute, I remember that.
She was about as cute as a redheaded, green-eyed, pale-yet-befreckled girl could be, but I didn't know that she was cute back then...I thought she was gross, had a staring problem and was really, really grabby.

At the time I thought she was my cousin, which put me off bigtime because I thought that she was coming on pretty strong for being family...I mean, as young as I was, I knew that making out with family was generally a bad idea...also, at the time I was under the impression that making out led directly to Pregnancy and therefore Madness and Poverty.
Gimme a break, I'd only been tying my own shoes for a few years, I was figuring it all out.

Anywho...

We (my family and hers) were at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, California, if you'd ever been there you would know that unless you're very interested in Farm Animals, Indian Quilts and Hay, lots and lots of Hay; you would not be very interested in the Sonoma County Fair.
However there were and I believe still are some of the greatest and scariest fair rides in existence...I say greatest because every ride is great when you're a kid, and I say scary because I now know that at any given time the ride that you are on can suddenly burst into flames or come loose and fly across the sky before landing in a pile in the middle of the fairway.

That's right Folks! The really old and rickety looking Ferris wheel really is rickety and old...I think that the Carnies must lay bets at the beginning of every fair season as to when the the "Ol' Girl" will fall apart. I would if I was a Carnie!
Of course, at the time I didn't know any of this, all I knew was that this red-headed girl named Amanda was trying to hold my hand and kept asking me to ride on the same booth as her when we went on the Ferris wheel.

I was terrified. Terrified!
Not of the Ferris wheel mind you...that was a piece of cake, in my 9 year old world I faced death square in the eyes everyday and laughed as I sped away on my BMX with a baseball card flicking in the spoked wheels, making my cruiser sound much more menacing than it actually was.
But this was a different story altogether, I was feeling true and genuine fear...this crazy red-headed girl was trying to hold my hand! AND she wanted to ride in the same booth as me on the Ferris wheel! AAAGGHHH!! I was no dummy, I knew what happened when girls got boys alone on Ferris wheels...Pregnancy, Madness and Poverty...I didn't want anything to do with it; yet I was powerless against the iron will of the little girl that crushed my hand in a vice-like grip as she led me toward my destiny. I knew then what the Bible meant when it said that "...He was lead like a lamb to the slaughter." I was doomed.

So, it was there on that incredibly old and incredibly rickety Ferris wheel that the girl that I thought was my cousin leaned over and stole a kiss from me...she must have known that if I had not been 80 feet in the air on a spinning death trap that I would have bolted after puking on her shoes. As it was, I had no where else to go and could do no more to resist her pursed lips than close my eyes, scrunch up my face in the hopes of becoming less attractive and pray to Jesus that it would be over soon.

To my relief and further belief in prayer; Amanda did no more than give me a light kiss on the lips before turning away from me and giggling like a crazed person...she giggled like that for the rest of the ride and only looked back at me once or twice - I'm assuming to confirm that she had actually done what she thought she had done.

When we stepped off of the Ferris wheel I felt fairly certain that both my parents and hers knew that Amanda and I had been "Making out", I'm just guessing, but I think they may have known because Amanda and I were holding hands, grinning like idiots with bright red cheeks and glazed-over eyes.

I never saw Amanda again after that night at the fair and even though my memories of her are a little fuzzy and I lose a little bit of the memory as time passes; I'll still think of that red-headed, freckle-faced girl with grim determination in her green eyes whenever I think of the first time I ever kissed a girl...rather, got kissed by a girl.