There was nothing to do in Pewaukee except play sports, cruise, and hang out in the Burger King parking lot on Friday nights, trying to convince girls to give us their phone numbers. Bean and I were kicking it there with some friends during Homecoming weekend when an egg came flying through the air and splattered against my buddy's windshield. Tires screeched from the street, and the kids who threw the eggs shouted some stupid bullshit at us. It was like the Pewaukee equivalent of a drive-by shooting, and being the ninth-grade BMOC that we were, we weren't about to be disrespected like that.
"Let's get these motherfuckers," Bean said.
Five of us crammed into my friends tiny Ford Escort hatchback, probably looking like the clown act at the circus. When Bean climbed in, the bottom of the car sagged an extra couple of inches and the undercarriage scraped as we exited the parking lot. We immediately drove to the only supermarket in Pewaukee and bought several cartons of eggs. We spent the next few hours tearing around the quiet, tree-lined streets, looking for the guys who had dissed us. We eventually found them in their Ford Bronco back by the Burger King and pelted their vehicle. They hit us back and started to chase our yolk covered car around town, flying around corners and flooring it dangerously down the boulevards. Someone splattered egg on a black Trans Am, and it started to follow us at high speed as well.
After a while, we heard the wail of the police siren. The other two cars quickly veered off in different directions, but the cop stayed on our tail and we knew we were screwed. He took all five of us downtown to jail, where he called our parents. The only ray of light on that awful evening was that he got my mom on the phone instead of my father, who was sleeping. They gave her the details about why I had been detained and then told her that she needed to come down to the station so I could be released into her custody.
"I'm not coming to pick him up," she told the police. "He can stay in jail tonight or you can bring him here."
They brought me home in the back of the cop car.
"You really made some interesting choices tonight," my mom said sternly as we sat in the kitchen.
"I know," I said. To be totally honest, I was a little freaked out. I wasn't the kind of kid who got into trouble very often. I mean, I had to stay after school a few times for talking back to teachers and had certainly been on punishment at home for kicking the crap out of Jeff and staying out too late, but I had never been in trouble with the law before.
"You know also that you are going to be grounded for a very long time," she said, giving me that tired look of supreme disappointment that mothers tend to give their wayward sons after they get arrested. "A very, very, very long time."
"Yes," I said, not wanting to hear what my father would have to say about my interesting choices. Let's just say he wasn't amused.
I thought that would be the end of it, but later, each one of us received a fine of several hundred dollars for disturbing the peace and destruction of private property.
"What are you going to do?" my mom asked, holding the letter from the police in her hand. "How do you plan on paying these fines?"
"I don't know," I said. I wasn't about to ask my parents for help.
"You made the mistake," she said. "You have to figure out how you are going to deal with this on your own." She gave me an impersonal pat on the back. "You'll be able to handle it. I have confidence in you."
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Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 01:19PM