Crazy Little Thing Called Trouble

A friend of mine is currently compiling stories of ‘misspent youth’ from lots of people our approx. age (25-40) and will be starting a blog site of that name in the summer. In this blog he will share stories from people he reached out to from all over the country and then compare and contrast them with his own set of posts. He’s planning on using monikers for each person’s set of stories, ‘The Southern Slut’ (not me), ‘The Midwest Jock-less’ (nope, not me), ‘New England Boundary Freak’ (still not me)…those are some examples he’s been throwing around. When he debuts this collection he’ll be posting a post a day for five days and he’ll be asking for email comments which he will post in a compilation post on Sat. and Sun. Very cool.

He’s asked me to submit a series of stories from my very own misspent youth to add to his collection. I’m adding this disclaimer to the beginning of each post I submit for his blog, posts that I’m going to share with you guys too:

I regret 75% of the things I did and said as a teenager. I had a big mouth and used it ad nauseum. I would push people with words just to see them react to me and to entertain me. I cannot blame anyone but myself. Please read this with the obvious comic intent intact, but keep in mind I am not proud of anything I might have done to harm the people around me and ultimately to myself. Some of these stories have elements of fiction added to keep certain individuals identities intact.

I was considered ‘trouble’ by my peers and their parents as a teenager. Jeremiah says I was ‘full of myself’ and ‘arrogant’, but there must have been something he liked about me considering the amount of time his tongue spent in my mouth, right?

Regardless of what I was like, I think I was considered ‘trouble’ because I never got punished when I got caught at something punishable, but my friends were being punished on a very consistent basis. Thus adding to the general idea that the trouble we were often in was somehow my fault or my idea, which it of course, always was…but how would they know that?

When Spring sets up shop here in our town all teenagers go apeshit and at 17, I was certainly no exception. One day while working the counter at my friend’s record store I came up with the bright idea that my friend Michelle and I should get completely and totally plastered. This idea that seemed totally romantic and rocking in my head…the execution and result of this idea showed my faulty logic only causes destruction (and vomiting).

I begged and begged and begged the friend who I was working for that day to pick us up a bottle of Vanilla Stoly while he was out running his errands. (I hope he can’t still get in trouble for supplying minor’s alcohol 11 years later) It wasn’t surprising or odd for me to beg for something like that, the surprising part happened two hours later when he returned with a giant brown paper bag. And just like that *snap* the day goes from normal to completely and totally fucked.

My bright idea was to get a two liter of Sprite and two giant cups (with bendy straws, of course) and then drink and write poetry in the decrepit cemetery four blocks from my parent’s house. We’d get drunk, enlighten each other with the deep and crucial meaning behind humanity’s existence and then sneak into my parent’s house after my mom went to bed. Great idea, Erin!

We acquired the Sprite and the cups from my dad’s pharmacy, which was just blocks from the record store (back in the day, sonny, we walked everywhere…in the rain…in the snow…with no shoes…).

When we arrived at the pharmacy the awkward conversation with my Dad about what I was doing with a two liter of Sprite (all pop consumption was prohibited at our family home) and two giant cups with bendy straws went something like this:

“Erin. I’m sure you know that you are taking a big chance drinking that amount of soda. The sugar content alone is enough to make you sick for days.”

“Thanks Dad. I’ll just have a small bit. It’s mostly for Michelle. She drinks this stuff all the time, has a high tolerance.” Michelle and I are sniggering uncontrollably two sentences into the conversation.

“Okay Baby. Have a good time. Your mom said she’d leave the door unlocked for you…oh…right. Michelle, your Dad called. He’s picking you both up at 8a.m. to do rollerblading at the river.”

“Oh alright! Cool, Mr. Erin’s Dad. We’ll need lots of sleep to be ready for that!” More sniggering.

“Erin. You guys weren’t smoking dope, were you?”

“No Dad. We really weren’t.”

HA!

So we got sloshed. Within minutes of setting up ‘camp’ at the cemetery it started raining. We at first decided that in order to not waste the vodka, we’d just drink as much as we could, sit in the rain, and stay there until we were sober enough to go home. A few moments of being soaked and we discovered that you can’t write poetry in the pouring rain, you can, however, annoyingly decide to walk across town to visit a friend who didn't want you at his home, soaking wet, drinking underage and singing songs from Grease at the tops of your lungs.

The friend* we had decided to visit was a kind soul. He was one of those guys you weren’t attracted to when you were a teenager, but later in life you suddenly realized his appeal. He was a bit older than us and was having an ‘adult’ party at his house, being that he and his friends were of age and we were not this was a party that we were definitely not invited to.

We rang and knocked for quite a while, standing on the stoop in the pouring rain. I figured that either they were ignoring us or they couldn’t hear us over the music (odd that we couldn’t hear any music from outside the front door either). So we just barged in.

Our friend was rushing towards us as we entered his house and I handed him the rest of our vodka as payment for, “Shelter from the storm, man…thanks for taking us in, it’s fucking brutal out there.”, as if he had any choice in the matter. (He could not look at me for months after this without laughing...he wasn't even mad at me, that's what a kick ass dude he was.)

He asked us to leave several times and threatened to call the parents before I noticed the lack of party going on at his apartment. It was dark, candles were lit and Michelle was headed towards the bathroom, getting ready to open the bedroom door that you had to walk through to get to there… when things started to moooovvvveeee inn vvvveryyyyy slow motion...

“Michellllleeeee….Nooooo….”

The realization had hit me way too late. My friend had obviously been smashing some broad in the bedroom when we barged in. I could tell this by his tousled hair and much more obvious, the condom slipping partway out of his boxer hole. Michelle was heading directly into nude city. The door opened up and I saw someone, as predicted, nude on the bed.

Then I saw Michelle double over and vomit EVERYWHERE. The nude shadow dashed off of the bed and into the bathroom and shut the door in Michelle’s pained, pale and puke covered face. More puking ensued.

“Oh my God Chelle, you’re a fucking mess. And You! Look at what you and your slutty friend have done! Michelle is wearing MY favorite t-shirt AND jacket. Ass”

Enter nude shadow, who turns out to be my Gym teacher, no joke. She helped Michelle clean up her puke, rinsed her clothes in the sink and threw them in the dryer, the whole time warily staring at me. I think the gist was she was being so nice so I wouldn’t make a big deal of this. Although I really wasn’t upset or angered, I opened my giant gaping hole and assaulted the poor lady over and over again, in oh so polite terms,

“What are you, like, 30 or something?”

“You're naked! I saw your boobs!"

“You couldn’t find someone your own age to screw?”

“I suppose I won’t have to take swimming anymore, right?”

I guess they got fed up with this eventually. They called my Dad. He came sheepishly a half hour later, much more embarrassed than mad. I have a feeling my dad was a bit of ‘trouble’ back in the day too.

“Sorry. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Too drunk.”

“DADDY! I’m barely drunk. Michelle chugged this shit down. I was sipping. That’s like delicate and whatnot.”

“K, Baby. Let’s get Michelle and go home.”

I suppose my dad told my mom what happened, cause when she woke us up at 7a.m. the next morning her face had that ‘ I’m ugly when I’m mad but oh so pretty when I’m not’ look and she was banging things around. Loudly.

She brought me coffee and grapes and asked Michelle if she wanted some tea. She had to get sober and not vomity before her Dad got there to pick us up for the day. Michelle cried. A lot. I think she was afraid my parents would tell on her.

Michelle was still vomiting when her Dad picked us up. Food poisoning, my parents told him. He still made us go, what a dick! I had a wonderful day, chilling, roller blading, tubing down the river. Michelle spent the day in the rest area, sleeping and puking her guts out.

She told me she hated me 20,039 times that day. I just smiled and thought about how much I adored my parents.

And how much of a slut my Gym teacher was!

*My friend died a few years ago all of a sudden one sad sad day. He was one of the only people I knew growing up that liked me for me and saw right through my bullshit. If you pray, say a silent prayer for him, the young family that he left behind and his friends, I know that they still mourn him to this day, just as I do.

**I of course changed around the identity of my friend's sexy time pal. I never told anyone else about their 'affair'. I may have been a jerk, but not that much of one.