Earning a Trip to Bootcamp.

My senior year of high school I spent a good part of the first two weeks of classes raiding a local mushroom field. I was the only individual of my clique to have not yet graduated. This doesn't mean that I was behind in my studies, but simply the youngster.

Most of my time during those first couple of weeks was filled with picking, boiling, trippin', and analyzing over and over again every nuance and perceived subliminal message of the movie Natural Born Killers. "Repetition works David...Repetition works!"

I'm pretty sure David, Mario, and myself had the dialog reverted to memory by day two. The memorization enhancement of hallucinogens was indeed remarkable. Quite a convenient counter-balance to all of the pot we were also ingesting. Yeah, right!

While in one of these drug-induced mid-morning skip sessions, we decided we wanted some beer. As a freshman and sophomore we would just steal beer; or "wahoo" as the locals dubbed it. In Texas, however, you become an adult at the age of seventeen. That was no longer our M.O.. Could you imagine going to jail for stealing beer? Us either.

All we had on us was our lunch money. Which meant MY lunch money, because I was the only one still in school. Five bucks wasn't going to get us many beers. Lots of $1 Whoppers, but not many beers. You remember when Burger King had $1 Whoppers? No, not Junior Whoppers. Fuckin' Whoppers.

I was driving my father's truck that day for some reason that I can't recall. My 300zx was probably in the shop. I really mistreated that car. Anyway, when I say that, "we decided we wanted some beer," I mean we drove past a house, saw some golf clubs sitting on someone's front porch, and we took them. David jumped from the truck and walked as inconspicuously as a black man can in a suburban neighborhood. While doing so, a brown astro-minivan had passed us, heading the opposite direction.

Tiger Woods tossed the clubs into the bed as he returned and stepped back into the truck. Just as I began to let my foot off of the clutch, the astro-van power-slid like a beaching whale into our pathway. Was this really happening? Super-Mom was here to save the day?

What I found out about a half-second later, while staring down the barrel of a gun, was that Mom was a Man, and this Man was on his way to work, which just happened to be the local police station. He just had to drop his daughter off at day-care first! She was still in the baby-seat though. Guess he got to work a little early. Can you imagine going to jail for stealing golf clubs? Pathetic, but that was our fate. (Click here to subscribe to my feed!)

(To be continued.)