Saturday, January 5, 2008

Egg Raid on Mojo

Like a lot of people, I was a real creep from the ages of 14 to about 19. I’d like to think hormones and chemicals and what not had a lot to do with it, and in my defense, today my assholishness is more of an occasional embarrassing slip-up rather than a defining character trait.
There are many, many things that make me squirm now when looking back. I was an ugly, whiny little shit with no regard for anyone except myself and when I got in fights, I really should have just let whoever it was pound my ass just on principle.
Like many powerless, angry nerds, most of my damage was directed at property, because to paraphrase Bruce Lee, property can’t hit back. I had a group of friends that would meet up fairly regularly to go egging cars at night. We’d usually meet at my house, I’d sneak out and we’d head down to the 7-11. I don’t know why we didn’t just take eggs from our house, because it would have spared us the need to go into our little play.
“So, your mom wanted us to buy eggs?””Yeah, she said she was making a cake. Kind of crazy to be baking a cake at 3 in the morning, but you know, that’s what she said.”
I don’t know why we bothered, since at that hour the 7-11 usually employed scary burnout dudes more interested in their copy of Kerrang than whatever mischief a bunch of kids were up to.
Then we’d walk down Manatee Avenue, hiding in bushes and throwing eggs at cars. Sometimes we’d pick grapefruit from trees if we didn’t feel like buying eggs.
Every now and then when driving through some town early in the morning, trying to stay awake, I wonder what I’d do if I heard the thump of a grapefruit on my hood. Probably freak out, spin out of control and drive off a cliff in a ball of fire like in the movies.
Luckily, we never caused anyone to wreck, and we knew the side streets well enough never to get caught.
The thing is; being bad was just so much fun. It was exciting walking down deserted streets with a handful of produce with my nerd army. It was exhilarating running through the sleeping city, hiding in people’s backyards, wondering if this was the time we’d get caught. Sort of like when I discovered skating and would pull off long grinds and railslides down the curbs of the streets I had egged a few years earlier. There was a point where you can feel momentum taking over and you are purely responding to physics and gravity. That split second where you feel weightless, not knowing if you were going to pull off your ride or fall on the pavement was an amazing feeling, and one of the few I found that replicated being a little asshole.
I’ve never had my house or car egged, but if I did, I couldn’t really get too mad about it. It’d just be the scales of justice.

1 comment:

Keith said...

"Then we’d walk down Manatee Avenue, hiding in bushes and throwing eggs at cars."

This is one half of a wonderful Dr. Suess paragraph.